Brace yourselves, Signing Day came early

Published 7:00 pm Wednesday, December 20, 2017

<p class="indent">So we interrupt a perfectly glorious college bowl season — sing along with me: <span>The most wonderful time of the year</span> — so that the recruiting geeks can have their version of a holiday Black Friday while slugging it out in the talent mall.</p><p class="indent">Yeah, it’s only Wednesday</p><p class="indent">But it’s the day your favorite schools load up for rebuilding or reloading with ESPNU and the SEC Network covering it gavel to gavel.</p><p class="indent">Yes, it’s National High School Signing Day, the only reason modern, progressive universities still keep antique fax machines around and …</p><p class="indent">Wait just a minute. When did this happen?</p><p class="indent">It’s not even Christmas yet. Aren’t we supposed to be spared this kind of insanity until at least after the proper bowl season is done and …</p><p class="indent">Oh, yeah. Remember?</p><p class="indent">Not content to torture the average college fan with one National Signing Day per year, the powersthat-be have added an early bird special, like today, with fax machines whirring, beer taps flowing, the whole works.</p><p class="indent">The rational fan is still free to ignore it, content to assume that the place to which he donates half his take-home pay for tickets, parking and a Tradition Fund of some sort will assemble a new crop of viable freshmen to replenish the varsity by August.</p><p class="indent">Wishful thinking perhaps. You have to have a scoreboard for recruiting, subject to the whims of the internet, that many will take more seriously than the annual onfield grudge match against Blood Rival U.</p><p class="indent">They just can’t help themselves, even with counselling.</p><p class="indent">But, despite ample warnings, this new December exercise did seem to sneak up on us.</p><p class="indent">I remember when it was first announced — two national signing days — thinking that this can’t be any good for anybody.</p><p class="indent">But maybe, after further review, this isn’t such a bad thing after all.</p><p class="indent">Today’s National Signing Day Part One — actually a three-day window — will not have the finality, the urgency, of the old one-time February date.</p><p class="indent">All the coveted “class rankings” will magically appear, but will be somewhat speculative and still subject to change after the Redux.</p><p class="indent">Likewise, Part Two, which will appear in that regularly scheduled February window that we’ve come to dread, should be somewhat anticlimatic, certainly nothing worth skipping work and declaring a national holiday about. In layman’s terms, it just went from being right up there with Labor Day to being Arbor Day.</p><p class="indent">And that can’t help but be good for the country’s overall mental health and well being. It might even stimulate domestic production.</p><p class="indent">Could it be that, in this case at least, two is greater than one?</p><p class="indent">Hopefully. But it comes at a cost.</p><p class="indent">The astute observer will note that this early signing day comes before the silly high school allstar games, most notably the U.S. Army’s strut-and-preen version. That will deprive many of the young studs the self-gratifying gyrations of playing eenie-meanieminy-moe with a table full of ball caps with which to tease multiple fan bases before letting the nation breathe again with a choice of higher learning.</p><p class="indent">And that alone throws the whole recruiting process out of whack.</p><p class="indent">Of course, if it was up to the coaches, the signing day would be in July just so they could miss out on a late-blooming high school 17-year-old but not have to worry about rival poachers with no regard for a “verbal commitment” swooping in to cannibalize half the class.</p><p class="indent">As is, today’s ramifications can best be described as uncharted chaos.</p><p class="indent">It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.</p><p class="indent">But these three days, for instance, will do nothing but distract from the Frisco Bowl, the Bahamas Bowl, the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparillo Bowl and even, sadly, the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.</p><p class="indent">Scoff if you must, but we all know when it comes to the bowl season, it’s more the merrier. Teams are actually preparing for these games … some as it were, with one eye on the fax machine.</p><p class="indent">And pity the 9,000 or so schools that now have new head coaches since the regular season ended. They have far less time to play catchup before all the trendy toys are picked over.</p><p class="indent">And that’s just the half of it.</p><p class="indent">The real coaching carrousel generally begins after the recruiting season when the mass firings/exodus/fleeings of assistant coaches kicks in.</p><p class="indent">They try to keep it hushhush until after the bowl games or, in some cases, right through national signing day.</p><p class="indent">It will be interesting how that works now. Will the big shake-ups come after the first signing day? The bowl? The second signing day?</p><p class="indent">It’s another question to ponder.</p><p class="indent">It might turn out that there are just not enough hours in December for coaching changes, bowl games, playoffs, staff realignments <span>and</span> a lagniappe national signing day.</p><p class="indent">So I suspect that, no matter the intentions, this will be a short-lived experiment.</p>