This is the day that REAL college football junkies get excited for every year. Sure, there's the start of the college football season, the rivalry games, and the BCS National Championship Game, but today - TODAY is where programs are built, championships won and lost, and coaches fired or...well, not fired.


Yes, today is National Signing Day, where 99.5% of all high school football recruits will sign their National Letters of Intent to play college football at their chosen institution. It's a day where there are clear winners, crushed losers, and a few mega-surprises that keep everyone on the edge of their seats. National Signing Day is, for all intents and purposes, the sporting world's equivalent of "Engaged and Underage" - tons of kids in over their heads making the best decisions they know how about their future. It's reality TV gold...but in a much less sickeningly desperate kind of way.

Recruiting has gotten a LOT more attention over the last few years because of sites like Scout.com or Rivals.com, but the guy who started it all was Tom Lemming, who now currently works for CBS Sports and MaxPreps (he had worked for ESPN for decades before leaving for CBS). Lemming has been scouting players since 1978 (that's over 30 years of sweaty jock straps, frequent flier miles, and notepaper and pencils), and his Prep Football Report has become "the" recruiting resource for coaches and recruitniks alike. Lemming may be the Godfather of recruiting, but now it's easier than ever to look at players' film on the Internet (oftentimes YouTube will have at least some kind of amateur footage for free for people to watch), make your own assessment, and then follow that player's recruitment through a series of media outlets (Twitter, Skype, and Facebook have revolutionized the recruiting process...if you don't believe me, watch this ESPN video).

However, here's the bottom line for today. Today is the day where you will see thousands of high school kids sign a piece of paper dictating where they will play college football next season. It may sound cheesy, but futures of both student-athletes and football programs are shaped today. However, the indomitable (and SEC biased) Pat Forde actually has the best take on National Signing Day in his recent ESPN piece:

"The question isn't how good a recruiting class is in February; it's how good the class is from September to January two, three and four years from now. Which means that the following factors matter far more than how many stars have been assigned to each player's name: How hard are they going to work? How well will they fit with their program? How well will they be coached? How much will they grow up? And how toxic are the effects of excessive hype and hero worship on the highest-rated recruits in the nation?"

So maybe National Signing Day isn't what we all thought it was...

...or maybe it's the first time Pat Forde has ever been right about anything.

Either way, I know I'll be glued to my computer and the television watching to see all these high school kids make the biggest decision of their lives and choose the school where they will play college football next season. Just without any wedding rings and over-bearing parents involved.

Okay, maybe just without the rings.