I Sit and Wonder, Is It Too Much?

If you know me, I love football. I love everything football. I love everything NFL football and I love everything college football. And now, I introduce to you my new football obsession: Recruiting and National Signing Day. I've followed recruiting and National Signing Day for the last few years, but this year, I'm all about it. If you are unfamiliar with National Signing Day, let me lay it out for you. February 1^st is known in the college football world as National Signing Day, the first day of the year where prominent high school football players can sign Letters of Intent (LOI) to go play college football at the school of their choice, hopefully the school that you root for. LOI are basically college football’s form on a contract. These players are agreeing to spend the next 4-5 years of their lives at a particular university. If a player wishes to transform at any point after he signs his LOI, the school must first grant them their release, and then after picking a new school to transfer to, they must sit out a full year before they can start participating in team functions, practices, and games. For a high school player this is a long and strenuous process that, especially if you are a highly rated and touted player, starts from when you are a freshman in high school and ends with National Signing Day. When it does end and they do finally make that tough decision, a press conference is called for the announcement and much fan fare is made. It all culminates with the final decision, the signature selection of the school’s hat of his choice and wearing it for photo ops.   

    

Through the players prior year, and basically their entire high school playing career, they are being wooed, glamoured, showed power-point presentations, and some are even given *cough, cough – lucrative incentives – wink, wink* from coaches of a particular university as a way to entice them to go play at their university. Players are constantly receiving phone calls, text messages, emails, facebook post, and in-home visits from recruiters / coaches persuading, sometimes bagging, players to come play at their school.  Recruits also take recruiting trip to campuses so they can be shown the stadium and facilities they would be using as a member of the team. Players who are already on the team “host” the potential recruit and show them where all of the happening spots are around the school and campus, selling them on what a great place the university and town is. The recruit soaks this all in, goes back home and assesses which school and football program best fits him the best. A highly touted recruit will visit 5-6-7 campuses his senior year alone.         

To a college football fan, National Signing Day is their NFL Draft, their Christmas. For weeks and month, maybe even years, recruits play and toy with the emotions of coaches, players, and fans, leading them on that they will attending their university, when all along, there are multiple schools they are choosing from. We hang onto every word they say, or now tweet. We follow their recruiting process and see what universities they take recruiting trips too. We read exit interviews and articles after those trips to see what the recruit will say about the trip, hoping that it’s nothing too grand as to displace your football program as his school of choice. All this in the hopes that in the end they will sign that LOI to play at the university you root for. 

Landing a good recruit, or having a good recruiting class (the group of incoming freshman players), can set your football program up for years to come. It’s a whole domino effect. One good recruit can entice other good recruits to follow him to play for your football program, which will lead to your program having a good recruiting class overall, which can lead to your football program having a good record, which will attract more good recruits to want to play for your football program the following year, which will hopefully lead to an even better recruiting class than the year prior, which will lead to an even better record, and so on. It is essentially how good football programs are built and have staying power. And vice versa, a bad recruiting class can lead to a bad year, and the same domino effect happens in reverse. 

A recruit will take multiple things into his consideration when picking his school. They will site relationship with coaches and players, facilities, winning program and school tradition, opportunity to play and playing time, and most importantly (or should be in most people’s eyes) academics. I am one who actually believes that high school football players do take academics seriously when picking their school, but there is also one unsaid consideration. If you are a highly recruited football player with national predominance and are projected to be a very good player, the university that gives you the straightest path to the NFL I think will ultimately win out. You can’t blame them for taking that route, as they are gifted athletes with dreams of playing in the NFL. Why wouldn’t you go to the school that will showcase your talents the best while also having the most NFL connections? It’s brutal to say, but its reality. 

Take schools like Cal, Stanford, and Notre Dame. While these schools have very good football programs and have gotten their players into the NFL, they have very high academic standards that hinder recruiting for their football program. The school’s academic standards might be too difficult for a recruit to either qualify for entrance, or keep up with while in school. So nationally rated recruits may shy away from these schools and coaches at these schools won’t recruit these players. Others who do qualify may embrace the challenge, realizing that their football career may not pan out, so they will have a degree from a highly respected academic institution they can fall back on.            

For a football honk and fan like myself, I sit and wonder if I’m going too far. I sit and follow blogs and read recruiting update on ESPN Recruiting Nation and Rivals.com to see where these kids will go, wondering if they will commit to play for the school I root for (CAL Bears). I sit and listen to podcast of other recruiting analysis, getting their take on where these kids will commit too. These kids are essentially kids. They are 18 year old athletes and I hang onto their last word and following their recruiting process like a hawk. Some, most, won’t even live up to expectations. They, I, glorify them before they even suit up or take a class. Its been causes me headaches and drives me crazy not knowing if my football program will land that nationally touted recruit (ie: Shaq Thompson of Grant High School, Sacramento, #2 Safety in the nation).  My football program hangs in the balance of these 18 year old kids decision. I sit and wonder, is it too much?  

Mr. Armchair Speaking