Eliminate Signing Day entirely – In College Football?
SEC presidents and athletic directors wisely nixed their football coaches’ idea of an early signing period during their meeting last week in Destin, Fla. Give the administrators another year or two, though, and they’ll make the same mistake as the coaches.
In only a year, SEC coaches went from voting 9-3 in opposition to an early signing period to voting 9-3 in favor of a late-November period during which football players, like their spring-semester-sport counterparts, can sign a national Letter of Intent. Coaches in other conferences have experienced similar epiphanies.
What the coaches — and the administrators who eventually will approve such a plan — don’t understand is that an earlier signing period won’t solve the problems inherent in the system of non-binding commitments (from schools and from prospects) that rules until the first Wednesday in February every year.
So before the coaches waste their dwindling vacation time devising a scheme that will result in an early signing period for the class of 2010, consider this alternative proposal.
Forget the current system. Blow it up.
si.com
6/6/08
Magnolia Tribune
