Reflecting on National Signing Day

By Mike Szvetitz
Sports Editor, Opelika-Auburn News
Published: February 7, 2008

Wednesday was National Signing Day, don’t know if you heard.

It was a great day here at the Opelika-Auburn News. We had 11 high school seniors and their coaches and families attend our annual luncheon at the newspaper.

You can read more about that here.

Also, if you want to look at the photos that were taken of the day, which included lunch from Chuck’s Barbecue (big ups to Chuck and his peeps over there. That’s some good food. Book it), you can see them here.

I even got to be on TV yesterday, getting my bald dome on WRBL—our Media General News partner. If you want to watch any of the signing day video from my boys Jack Rodgers and Shawn Skillman did, you can peep it here.

There were really no surprises on the high school side, at least from our area. Everyone signed where they said they were. No suspense. No hat tricks. No fake reverses.

At Auburn University, however, it was a different story.

Collin Mickle, our Auburn University beat writer, has a lot more to say about the Tigers 2008 signing class on his My Five Cents blog.

*** I did an interview with Auburn High head coach Tim Carter yesterday after our luncheon for a column I’m writing for Sunday’s paper. The focus of the column, and the interview with Carter, was to really figure out if high school football recruiting is too much hype.

Carter should know, he coached one of the nation’s best, and most hyped, safeties in Dee Finley, who signed with Florida. He also had two other players sign scholarships Wednesday—running back Brandon Ross is headed to Memphis, while defensive end Baylor Bennett is going to Jacksonville State.

If anyone should know about trying to deal with the expectations and the reality (which most times are two very different things), it’s Carter.

Here are some excerpts from our interview. You can read the full column in Sunday’s Opelika-Auburn News.

OA: What does a day like this mean to you as a coach?
TC: It’s real gratifying to me, because it’s the culmination of all the hard work of, not only the players, but the coaches, too. This is an opportunity to change their lives. It’s a great opportunity.

OA: How do you keep your kids grounded during the recruiting process with all the national exposure on TV, radio and Internet.
TC: I don’t know if there is a perfect science, because you want your kids to get exposure, but you want them to be a part of, and think, team.
You kind of have to take the good with the bad. With all the recruiting services and stuff, it’s very time consuming.
You want them to keep it all in perspective. I guess that’s our job.

OA: Is there too much hype surrounding these kids?
TC: It depends on the kid. How much support does he have at home? How’s is maturity level? It depends on a lot of that.
There’s a lot of pressure, because it makes these kids larger than life. It’s a burden to some of them, because they feel like they have to live up to these expectations.
But there’s a lot of give and take. Because if it wasn’t for the recruiting services, players wouldn’t have the opportunity to maybe get signed or have opportunities to play in the Under Armour (All-Star) game like Dee (Finley) did.

Again, you can read more from that interview in my column in Sunday’s paper.