The first Wednesday of February in college football has become a celebration of hat-picking suspense and hopeful speculation. Schools use national signing day to excite their fans, market the program and impress future recruits with a flashy welcome.
On one day, thousands of high school football players make their commitments to schools official.
A few last-minute flips, mad moms and disappointed dads provide a dash of intrigue. Every now and then a teenager pulls out a puppy to announce he will attend some school with a dog mascot. Signing day has become something of a circus and as the folks at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey can attest, this is not a good time to run a circus.
The phenomena of national signing day as a spectacle could be heading toward extinction with the likely introduction of an early signing period. Wednesday’s signing day will mark the end of an era.
“I hope so,” said Mid-American Conference Commissioner John Steinbrecher, who has been part of two groups that have been working on reforming football recruiting for three years.
All the freaking out and fawning over players who have never played a college game creates unrealistic expectations for the newbies and to some seems unfair to the ones already on campus.
A wide-ranging proposal of recruiting reforms, including a 72-hour December signing period, is in the NCAA pipeline and on target to be approved in April. The proposal also would create opportunities for recruits to take earlier official visits to campuses. The legislation is a reaction to trends more than a potential catalyst. The vast majority of recruits are already making up their minds way before signing day, Steinbrecher said. The hope is to create more transparency and certainty in a system that currently has nonbinding offers and commitments as its foundation.
“I think it’s been a long time coming,” said Mike Farrell, the director of recruiting for Rivals. “I think it will help settle down some of the craziness of recruiting.”
Media coverage and fan interest in recruiting spiked with the growth of the internet in the 1990s and over the last 15 years signing day has become a TV event with ESPNU and CBS Sports Network doing marathon coverage. It grew into hours of analysis, sprinkled with an occasional spurt of action and a smattering of uncertainty. Mini-dramas emerge when a recruit and family member don’t see eye-to-eye, delaying delivery of a national letter of intent after what looked like a jubilant announcement in a high school gym. Social media gets stoked for a while.
The action and uncertainty figures to be at a minimum on Wednesday.
An even more recent development has been schools trying to capitalize on the recruiting craze. Nearly every school in the country holds some type of signing day event for fans. It’s a way for athletic departments to bridge the gap between the end of the season and spring football and market ticket packages.