Today was LOI Day. The first day of the new year that high schoolers are allowed to sign Letters of Intent with schools to agree that they will come to play football for them.
The evolution of LOI Day has really been interesting to see over the last decade or so. It used to be so obscure, I think if you mentioned LOI Day to 1,000 fans, 999 of them would look at you like you were talking about nuclear physics. That hasn't exactly reversed, but at this point I would guess that 25% - 30% know about LOI Day, and probably a good 10% could tell you at least something about what went on.
Maybe not 10%, but damn sure it's a lot more than it was at this time in the '90s.
This has begun to get a lot more attention in the media recently, which is one of the main reasons it's becoming better known. ESPN ... Not the Deuce, not ESPN News, ... the main channel, broadcasts LOI Day. The antics get sort of crazy with these kids - and don't forget that's what they are...kids thrust onto national television - declaring their intentions. It's interesting to see where they're going, but the process itself has sort of gotten a bit sick. Ahh, gotta love that media.
Anyway, check out the live blogging above to recap the action. It's not really worth it much for me to go through it all cause I didn't see any of it live and don't particularly care to go word for word. My personal take from it is that as a Penn State alumni, I was really hoping Jelani Jenkins would choose us over Florida, but it looks like that's not gonna happen. Oh well, Linebacker U will go on I'm sure. Penn State's had a solid class so far, so I won't complain too much.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
LOI Day
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Maryland has the #25 or #26 rated class!
ReplyDelete(#25 on Rivals.com, #26 on Scout.com)
Their recruiting hasn't been fabulous these last few years, so that's good to see.
Rivals is generally "accepted" as being more accurate than Scout. But given the depth and scope of trying to cover every high school in the country, I think it's pretty hard to argue that either is as reliable as say the prospect analysis of the NFL draft. And I think we all know how accurate that is...
ReplyDeleteMD is doing pretty well this year, which is good to see. They've had a horrible few years. PSU has just raped the state of talent thanks to Larry Johnson Sr. It started a while back, but as soon as Justin King came aboard and convinced Derek Williams to come on with him, it's gotten really bad with much of Maryland's top talent opting for Happy Valley over College Park...
Signing Day has been growing in popularity ever since Lemming started publishing his newsletters in the '80s. All of a sudden people picked up on it as An Important Thing. Add in the scholarship limits, from unlimited to 120 to 80 at about the same time and recruiting became that much more important.
ReplyDeleteThat said, Signing Day has an even smaller impact than the NFL draft. It's fun to speculate about who did best, and generally the orders will be about right when all is done, but we are talking about high school kids, many of whom have only been evaluated at camps or against vastly inferior opponents. It's almost as if the NFL had to draft only from Division II and project those guys to the NFL.