National Signing Day

Yesterday was National Signing Day for college football. This is a pretty big day of the year for college football fans, and pretty much a national holiday down in the South where college football is king. The day does not do too much for me though. Yes, I like to glance at the rankings, and they do have some value and meaning. Recruiting rankings correlate very well with the future results of the schools. I guess it is just hard for me to get excited about players the majority of who are two and sometimes three or four years away from making a meaningful difference on the field. The players who do make a difference as true freshmen are usually covered in more detail than we need to know by the time camp breaks in the fall.

Pitt and Penn State both had fine recruiting years by all measures. Pitt’s class finished 16th according to Scout.com, 33rd according to Rivals.com and had the best class in the Big East according to ESPN. Only Rivals had the Panthers as not being the top class in the Big East, trailing only West Virginia. Kudos to Dave Wannstedt and his staff who continue to bring in strong classes, building depth and setting the program up for the future. Hopefully one of the two QBs in this class develops into the real deal that this team is looking for. Penn State’s class was ranked 9th by Scout, 12th by Rivals, and 11th by ESPN. On all three publications, Penn State had the best class in the Big Ten proving Joe Paterno and his staff can still get the job done on the recruiting trail. West Virginia was ranked 26th by Scout, 19th by Rivals and had the second best class in the Big East according to ESPN. All in all, it has to be considered a very successful year for the local schools in the recruiting wars.

In case you were wondering, the top classes were produced by the usual suspects; Florida, Oklahoma, Alabama, USC, Texas, Auburn, LSU. There is a reason these teams are competing year-in and year-out for National Championships and that is their ability to lure in the top high school talent around the country.