Sign on the dotted line...

Most of the people who read this blog are aware that I am a huge College Football fan. Of all the types of sports I watch, I follow College Football more fervently than any other. So it only makes sense that I'm also a fan/follower of College Football recruiting. I know, I know. It's a seedy industry essentially based on tracking the movements, moods and emotions of kids in high school. I'm aware of this, and even slightly embarrassed with my preoccupation with recruiting, but there's very little chance I'm going to apologize for it. Much less quit keeping up with it. Now, I'm not obsessed with it. I follow the top prospects on Florida's list and keep up with the other SEC programs (as well as a few of the other elite programs throughout America). I don't, however, friend these kids on Facebook like many people do (Full disclosure: My only "famous" athlete friends on Facebook are Adonal Foyle and Carlos Dunlap. Contact Adonal, he'll friend you too and you'll get a chuckle out of his profile picture), I don't post "Gator bait!" or any other crap all over the message boards when a kid de-commits from Florida like so many of my message board brethren (I'm a message board reader, not a poster) and I don't hate kids that commit to Tennessee or Florida State...well, most of them. I follow recruiting because it is the lifeblood of a good college football program and I because I am fairly well consumed with Florida Football. I also enjoy following recruiting because, as Jerry once pointed out, there are a number of off the charts ridiculous names each year...I'm looking at you Lache Seastrunk. This is still this my personal favorite.

Look at any top program, and you will find two things: 1. They have a top flight coaching staff in place. 2. They recruit very well. It's that simple. You might be able to have a year or two of success with only one of these factors. You cannot, however, have sustained success with one of these two elements missing. Ron Zook's tenure at Florida is a decent example of this. Zook was only moderately successful at Florida, and some would even say disappointing. But make no mistake about it, Ron Zook can recruit his ass off. In fact, most of the contributors to Florida's 2006 National Championship team were recruited by Zook. Yet, up until 2006 many of those players (and by extension their recruiting classes) were considered underachievers. Urban Meyer and his staff's ability to mold and teach those players was what pushed them to a championship.

From that point on, Meyer has proven himself to be both a talented head coach and a tireless recruiter...and, not coincidentally, Florida's football program has become one of the nation's finest. This development at Florida is not an isolated incident. If a program has both good coaching and is consistently signing top 10 recruiting class, they will be very successful for long stretches of time. This is how it works in college football and this is not up for debate.

With that said, recruiting is an inexact science. Coaching staffs must be able to evaluate talent on their own (there are 3 major recruiting services and their ratings of recruits often vary wildly...for example), recruit balanced classes that fill needs and finally, find the right spots for their recruits once they arrive on campus. In nearly every highly rated class you will find a 5 star recruit who never develops into a star (or even a starter). Quite often, in that same class is an under recruited 2-3 star player who emerges as a star. This year's National Champion Alabama was led by a tenacious defense full of highly rated recruits. Amongst this collection of prep All-Americans was All-American corner Javier Arenas, a guy who's best offer out of high school was from Florida International. That is until Mike Shula (Rob just threw up in his mouth a little) came calling with a scholarship offer just a couple days before National Signing Day.

That's part of what makes recruiting great. You can evaluate the classes and watch film of prospects but you still never truly know about a player until they arrive on campus. Brock Berlin came to Florida as the nation's #1 high school player as well Steve Spurrier's wet dream. He left Florida without ever starting a game(actually, not true, he started his last game in the Orange Bowl against Maryland. Because Grossman got hammered and missed curfew. Ha!) after losing the starting QB job to a guy (Rex Grossman) who wasn't even recruited by Florida until he showed up in Gainesville with his game tape and asked to meet with the Head Ball Coach.

Recruiting is fun. Not only is it fun, it's important. Now that I think about it, I've come to realize how I came to follow recruiting so closely. It was Zook. It was SOOOOOO fucking clear he had no idea what he was doing during his first year at Florida that my only hope was the momentum Florida was gaining on the recruiting trail (when Zook was recruiting many of the players who would become the seniors on the 2006 National Champion team). I dove in to recruiting and started following Florida's class and going to message boards and started reading some of the articles by the recruiting gurus. When Florida signed guys a top 5 class that year, I was hooked. I've followed recruiting closely ever since. Motherfucking Zook gets me again.

So anyway. No, I won't be taking tomorrow off to watch 10 hours worth of ESPNU whilst surfing three message boards at a time, but I will be receiving texts every time one of Florida's commits faxes in their Letter of Intent. And you know what, I won't feel bad about it. If you're a College Football fan (especially one with a specific allegiance) you should care without feeling bad about it too. You know why? Florida has the number one class in the country this year. Do you know the last time Florida had the #1 class in the country?

2006. The class included some guys by the names of Tebow, Harvin, Spikes, Cunningham, James, Cooper and many, many others. Last I checked, those guys did pretty well for themselves in college. It doesn't always work out that way of course. Some classes don't pan out. Some guys get kicked out of school. Others transfer. Some just aren't as good as they're billed to be. But sometimes you watch a group of kids come in and play together for four years and make history together and change their program together. And it's a pretty gratifying feeling. Even if you didn't do anything, you feel a part of it. That feeling...it starts on National Signing Day.