Alabama cleaning up on National Signing Day

In this state, we have three seasons.  Winter, Summer, and Football. The culmination of Football Season is today—National Signing Day, the day where high school football prospects are allowed to begin signing Letters of Intent, a pledge to attend and play for a school’s athletics program in return for a full ride scholarship to the institution.

Today, the 2009 National Champions have racked up what appears to be a consensus blockbuster of a recruiting class.  Included among the signed letters of intent received as of 12:00 noon Eastern are high profile recruits Jeoffrey Pagan, Ha’Sean Clinton-Dix, Malcolm Faciane and Brent Calloway.

Pagan was thought to be a strong Georgia lean. Calloway, who had been committed to Bama for more than a year, suddenly switched his commitment to in-state rival Auburn. However, Calloway wisely saw the error of that decision and signed with the Tide.

The most interesting bit of drama occurred when top OL prospect Cyrus Kuandjio announced on ESPNU—live, to a national audience and a crowd from his school—that he had chosen Auburn over Alabama and New Mexico.  But that wasn’t the drama part.  The drama part came when the young man began having second thoughts and, as of 3:00 pm Eastern, had not transmitted his letter of intent.

Then this news was posted:

“Kristen” is FoxSports reporter Kristen Kenney, who was at Kuandjio’s announcement event and stayed with the kid and his family afterwards. Apparently, the young man thinks he’s made the wrong decision. Media and sportswriter reports on Twitter indicate that he will not sign a Letter of Intent today and may take a few days to decide what he wants to do.

The pressure put on these kids—some of which are not even old enough to register for selective service—to choose where they’ll spend the formative next 3-5 years of their lives is obviously enormous, and this young man’s face showed it during his announcement. Per the conversation related above, he sounds like he didn’t even know what he was saying.

Wouldn’t an early signing period, with some cooling off time in the interim before a deadline signing day, be a much better alternative than the media circus that NSD has become?