So national signing day went down this past week.  This has got to be the most fraudulent, overblown, media driven farce in quite some time.  It is a pure product of 24/7 media and the internet and nothing more.  Thanks to Rivals.com and other websites, we now have these rankings of high school players, by position and overall.  Actually we’ve had them for some time but 24-hour cable and sports talk radio in a never ending search for material have brought them to the forefront, and the focus climaxes on National Signing Day.  We get live press conferences where top high school players sit at a table surrounded by hats from different colleges and then putting one on to show the whole world where they’re going to play their college ball.

But wait, there’s more!  We also get commentary by TV talking heads and internet columnists, letting us all know which schools got the best recruiting classes and which ones crapped out entirely.  We get to hear how awesome (insert school name here)  is going to be because they got the best recruiting class in the country to go along with 17 returning starters from a team that went 11-2 this past season.  And then we hear about coach so-and-so being on the hotseat because, for the third straight year, he failed to land the best instate player on the board.  And all of it is nonsense.  There is no freaking way for anyone to properly project the futures of hundreds of 18 year old boys, many of whom are leaving home for the first time, on the football field.  No freaking way.  Go to Rivals. com and search through their archives; yes, you will find some highly rated players who went on to become big time college stars and NFL players.  But you’ll also plenty of ‘blue chip’ prospects whose names don’t even register anymore.

Let’s go back to 2002.  At the top of the list is Vince Young, which is fine, but the rest of the top ten reads like this: Haloti Ngata (fine), Lorenzo Booker (who?), Ben Olson, Reggie McNeal, Chris Davis, Ryan Moore, Marcus Vick, Leon Washington, and Ciatrick Fason.  That’s four guys you’ve heard of (Young, Ngata, Vick, Washington) and six that didn’t even do anything at the college level.    And missing from the 2002 list entirely was Aaron Rodgers.  The results for these things are all over the place.  Some guys go on to college greatness, and some of them do well in the NFL.  Others never get off the bench at whatever school they end up going to.  And of course there are those that go completely unnoticed by these outfits and become Hall of Famers.  Darrelle Revis, this year’s breakout star at corner, was the 46th ranked corner coming out of high school.

I’m not saying don’t keep track of who’s good at the high school level.  But it’s ridiculous to make a an event out of who signed to go to USC.  Yes, it matters if the Trojans or any other school get the best players.  But we have little to no idea who half of those guys are even going to be.   I’m not bashing the rankings so  much as I am ESPN turning the signings of these players into a television show.  Truth be told, none of us remember a damn thing about National  Signing Day the week after it’s over.  I can guarantee you that Texas fans don’t remember the day Vince Young made it official that he was going to be a Longhorn, or that USC fans remember Reggie Bush’s signing day press conference, if there even was one.  And I really doubt that Tennessee fans care so much that Casey Clausen was so highly ranked coming out of high school when he decided to go there, because he didn’t live up to it on the field.

Ratings are fine, but don’t let ESPN trick into thinking that your school will be in a BCS bowl because they got this allegedly awesome recruiting class.  You won’t know for two or three years, and by then you won’t remember what anyone at ESPN said about it.