So Wednesday was College Football Signing Day for the incoming ‘08 classes and it made most of the ACC schools very happy. Props to Miami and Clemson, who have the #1 and #2 nationally ranked incoming classes with FSU, VaTech, and NC State coming in within the top 20 classes, ranked by ESPN.
I follow the recruits, and signing day chaos because it is cool to see who will be the key players in the next few years and because it is all over the boards and headlines. But to be honest, I don’t give the rankings much thought beyond that because they really have no indication of how teams will finish next year, or even that these guys will do well in the college football world. Take Jim Grobe and his Demon Deacons, as an example. Has he ever gotten the top recruiting class in the nation? Nah. Not even close. But yet he takes his team to a BCS game in 2006 and in 2007 they are back in a bowl and finishing in the top of the ACC. I think that Signing Day has gotten way out of hand. The high school athletes now come to expect the attention and feel like they can get away with what they want if they are signing with some of the big names in college football. It gets the recognition that the Pros are getting- a camera at the High School waiting for their response, the kid picking up their future team’s hat to wear after committing, and all this for a 17-year-old…
But check out this hoax from earlier this week-Kevin Hart from a High School in Nevada called a press conference at his HS gym on Wednesday to announce where he will play football next fall. He had two hats in front of him, Oregon and Cal, and after giving credit to the coach for recruiting him he made the big announcement that he will attend the University of California. On Wednesday, I felt bad for Hart because rumors were flying that someone had set him up and even sent fake recruits so that he believed he was being recruited. But the news came out later this week that he staged the WHOLE thing. Can you believe it? Is the pressure that great that the players now have to make up stories of being recruited and take them to that level? When news of the recruit committing at this school assembly reached Coach Telford of Cal, it was the first time he had ever heard of Kevin Hart, much less that he was going to play on his team at Cal. I am embarrassed for his High School that went through the whole charade, and for his family that he put them through it all. The whole instance was being investigated by Nevada’s Interscholastic Athletic Assocation and law enforcement, and the Reno Gazette-Journal reported later on Wednesday that Hart admitted to making it all up. The Reno Gazette-Journal Prep Sports blog goes into the story more in depth.
Kevin Blackistone agrees in his Fanhouse blog that college signing day has created athletic monsters and believes that the media has created this beast. What do you think???
Powered by 
Entries (RSS)