Sign, sign everywhere a recruiting sign

Published 8:07 am Wednesday, February 1, 2017

LSU has announced an ambitious escalation of a previous plan, supposedly doable, to fight the recruiting wars with billboard carpet-bombing.

The school does not explain exactly how this will benefit society — it won’t, by the way — but it’s hard to fault the Tigers too much.

They’re just keeping up with the Joneses, to say nothing of the Sabans and Meyers out there.

You have to think outside the box sometimes.

The plan is to honor the latest recruiting class (2017), which will be assembled today, with an onslaught of 25 billboards targeted selectively throughout the state and in key (fertile) outposts of other states.

This ups the ante from the 16 billboards unleashed in last year’s initial offensive — which was limited only to Louisiana battlegrounds — and it’s pretty clear from the school’s statement that there’s plenty more where that came from.

So LSU won’t be falling behind in college football’s billboard race, which, if the Tigers didn’t invent it, nobody else has yet stepped forward to take credit (blame) for it.

Fairly simple, really. The billboards proclaim “Welcome to Death Valley,” before going on to slobber all over individual signees with a personalized head shot, high school, hometown, etc.

It’s a curious recruiting strategy, sort of like fighting and winning the Battle of New Orleans after the War of 1812 was already over.

LSU, of course can’t promote (honor) a recruit unless he has already signed with the school.

So the billboard brigade will have no effect on Ed Orgeron’s first signing class.

But recruiting unfortunately never really stops, and the real message on these things could be to the future swiftest and strongest, something along the lines of, you know, “Come be a Tiger: This Could be You Up Here in Lights …”

Yet to be determined is the trade-off.

For instance, how much will these fancy billboards set back the tricky de-programming process?

It doesn’t get nearly the social media play that the recruiting courtship does, but any coach will tell you that for the overall good of the program the recruiting de-programming is a critical part of the “process.” 

Coaching staffs spend almost as much energy letting the young studs know that, for all the bouquets and love letters sent their way over the last year to 18 months, they ain’t really all that, that the university does not revolve them and that at some point they are going to have to find a suitable role on what is known as a “team.” It might even be a role devoid of much glamour, with very little kissing up to.

By the time they’ve been pampered and fawned over for the better part of their high school careers — with insinuations that their choice of higher education is matter of grave, national security — it’s never too early to begin this reality check. The congratulatory billboards could set the process back a month or two.

It’s a gamble LSU is apparently willing to take, as that recruiting belly never quite gets filled up.

Meanwhile, college coaches are suggesting a semi-remedy — an early signing period in December to go along with the traditional first Wednesday in February.

The main flaw in the plan is that it is the coaches who are behind it — so you really have to wonder whose interests figure to benefit the most.

The proposal, which is expected to pass easily, is being dollied up as a way for the poor kids to get the whole thing over with, to get on with their lives and look forward to that billboard around the corner.

Maybe.

Certainly, polite society would be spared at least some of the January torture of figuring which kid will one-up the now-stale routine of choosing between three ball caps in front of him as the world waits with bated breath. Stay tuned today. Last year a kid jumped out of an airplane to announce he was going to Ole Miss. Fortunately the parachute opened (since that was the canvas to reveal his choice).

Mainly, though, coaches (and this could be self-serving) could end the process without worry of Cross-State U. “flipping” their prize recruit away from his “soft-oral” commitment.

The flaw in the traditional oral commitment — a media creation with no official standing in the NCAA — is that it isn’t worth the paper it isn’t written on.

A December signing day would presumably involve official documents and binding signatures.

That’s good if the recruit really wants to be done with the hassle (frankly, many seem to enjoy the attention).

But it’s also two months earlier that a 17-year-old could make a decision from which he can’t change his mind the next day, as 17-year-old kids are wont to do.

It’s hard to sum that up on a billboard.