I don’t like National Signing Day.
It’s an annual exaltation of overhyped high school kids on a nationally televised display of overinflated egos. Nonetheless, the drama captivates me every year, as I ultimately join the refresh-Twitter-every-minute obsession that sweeps the nation.
Maybe it’s some psychological validation since world-class athletes are choosing to come to my school.
Maybe we’re such sports fans that we’ve turned recruiting into its own game within the sport, with winners and losers, incessant coverage and analysis of every possible detail.
Maybe the product on the field is so consistently disappointing that we search for any kind of victory we can get, hoping and dreaming that our saviors are sitting in high school gyms nationwide.
No matter what it is, college fans can’t get enough of recruiting. And Wednesday – the 2016 National Signing Day – is our holiest of holidays.
UCLA football enters this year with a weaker class than it had entering 2015’s signing day. That’s not a huge surprise. Last year freshman quarterback Josh Rosen was already enrolled and was taking classes in Westwood. You can’t really beat that.
Things only got better, though, as the Bruins added to their riches on signing day last year. Four- and five-star recruits were announcing for UCLA left and right – Chris Clark, freshman running back Soso Jamabo, Roquan Smith, freshman offensive lineman Josh Wariboko-Alali and Cordell Broadus. By mid-afternoon it seemed that the Bruins couldn’t have had a better day, and the fanbase was rightfully loving it.
Then the drama started – a National Letter of Intent that never arrived, a defensive coordinator out the door and an uncomfortable dark cloud over an otherwise sunny day.
Months later, Broadus and his celebrity star power had a change of heart. Clark soon followed in an eastward move that seemed to speak more to the young man’s inability to find a program he could call home than to the failures of Jim Mora and UCLA.
Last year proved that little is known about highly-recruited prospects, whether it’s before or after signing day.
These kids are simply people who have complex decisions to make. Often they are simplified to a number, a rating with a star count that shapes how the rest of the world perceives their worth.
But that’s the nature of sports, for better or for worse.
There will be overreactions, there will be disappointment and there will be fans who are slightly too vicious on Twitter when their team misses out on a random 17-year-old from South Florida.
Is all the emotional energy worth it when, as UCLA fans learned all too well, there is still plenty of time for everything to crash and burn after the fact?
That’s why I’d like to offer my advice before tomorrow’s drama: Guard your heart.
Of course you should be excited when a five-star linebacker dons a blue-and-gold cap while flashing a smile with four fingers raised. College football programs increasingly rely on strong incoming classes to carry them, but don’t forget that football season is half a year away.
National Signing Day carries plenty of weight. It can be telling. It can be exhilarating. It can be heartbreaking.
And I know I’ll be watching.
Email Walters at twalters@media.ucla.edu or tweet him at @tannerbwalters.