Ah, the pageantry of football’s premier events. Airplanes circling above drop guests from the sky. Stars like Snoop Dogg make an appearance. Tom Brady is there, even though he isn’t playing. Guests arrive in limousines. People sleep outside in their cars to be first in line. Some of the guests star in music videos.
But we are not talking about the 50th Super Bowl.
It’s not even a professional football game. Or even a football game at all. It is National Signing Day for college prospects (or, as it has been designated at Michigan, the “Signing of the Stars”).
It used to be that the most publicized decision in early February was whether the Groundhog saw its shadow. For all the hoopla surrounding Punxsutawney Phil, it pales in comparison to what happens around the country on the first Wednesday in February.
At Michigan’s event, alumnus Tom Brady was there, along with former Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland. Even Nature Boy Ric Flair dropped in (WOOOO!) The Migos entertained.
As high school prospects make their final decisions and sign with their school of choice, ESPN runs a real-time ticker updating results, just as CNN and other news networks do on election day. And don’t even start talking about social media…18-year-old kids are treated like pariah for choosing one school over another.
Some refer to it as training for the NFL draft. But that training is a waste of time for about 99% of the college signees – only about 1% of them will actually be drafted. And even those who are drafted may not succeed in the NFL either on-the-field or off. Or both. Heard of Johnny Manziel?
Interestingly, the pageantry is so over the top that some coaches have a process called “de-recruiting” which is designed to burst the bubble of these “superstars” and get their feet back on the ground before football training starts. That such a process is necessary is disturbing enough. But the real issue is that many of these young men have been told tall tales to get them to the program.
When these ambitious, impressionable 18-year-olds are promised the moon, they are likely to believe it. After all, at that point in their lives, they probably also believe that they will play in the NFL. College (or at least 3 years of it, as required by the NCAA) is just an inconvenience to be tolerated to get there. Oh wait, there’s that academic part of it too…
But National Signing Day is actually more about the football programs than about the individuals who will represent the teams on the field. A program’s success on National Signing Day can make or break a team’s success during the season. In fact, during the day and in the days following, the debate about who had the No. 1 signing class is eclipsed only by the arguments in December about who should be in the BCS playoff games.
And a team’s success during the season can mean the difference in coaches being revered and unemployed. Charlie Strong of Texas and Les Miles of LSU were on the hot seat last year after disappointing losses during the season. For now, they are both safe because of good recruiting. But what these new recruits do on the field this fall, or whether they will even be on the field this fall, will be the ultimate truth.
While a good recruiting class can have a correlation to how the team performs over the next few seasons, it isn’t an exact science. Just this year, different services that rate the success of colleges’ signing classes ranked Mark Richt’s new regime at Miami at a range of 14th to 38th. In 2015, Alabama and FSU had the highest-ranked recruiting classes, but Ohio State and Oregon played for the national championship. And Marcus Mariota, Oregon’s quarterback in that game, had just been a 3-star recruit.
Via USA Today
Depending on which ratings service you believe, either Alabama or FSU had the best recruiting class this year. But the ratings might make more sense if they were done four years from now. In four years, some of these young men will have proven to be a good investment. Some who would otherwise have been a good investment have suffered career-ending injuries when they were living up to their potential. Some may no longer be on the team due to off-the-field behavior or the failure to maintain a minimum GPA.
Fact is, many of this year’s recruits will not play a down this fall. The other fact is that most of them were probably not given that impression during recruiting season. A coach isn’t likely to tell a high school superstar that he will be red-shirted his first year or that prized prospect will move on to the coach who gives him the illusion that he WILL play this year.
And it isn’t just quarterbacks and running backs and receivers. Jim Harbaugh pulled out all the tricks he could think of within NCAA guidelines to recruit a kicker. And not just recruit him, but get him to “flip” from Penn State (that’s a whole other phenomenon of National Signing Day – teaching high school young men that their word means nothing if they get a better offer).
At least the current system may be better for the young men than the “sign ‘em and sit ‘em” days of the Bear Bryant era. According to that philosophy, you sign as many as you can just to keep the other teams from getting them. And in the 1960s, very few recruits would turn down Bear Bryant. In fact, Georgia Tech actually left the SEC in 1963 as a result of the conference’s refusal to restrict oversigning and rival schools’ recruiting practices.
The irony is that these are educational institutions. But when was the last time you heard of a University president sitting on a student’s doorstep until the clock struck 12:01 so recruiting could legally begin. And 99% of the recruits will depend on their education to make a living rather than their dream of playing professional football.
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