Get on your boots (recruiting boots) | by Pat

It's 7AM on National Signing Day, the witching hour on the one day of the year that the increasingly obsolete fax machine is king of all machines in athletic departments across the country.

There won't be any minute-by-minute updates here, but feel free to share all the latest rumors and glory/despair that comes with Signing Day in the comment section. Und.com has a running blog highlighting all the incoming faxes, so make sure to re-visit this link all day. We'll probably link up any major news that comes across the wire. Analysis and a roundtable discussion of sorts will follow in a day or so after all the smoke has cleared.

While you are waiting to hear which faxes came in and which were sent to a rival fax machine, pass the time with this interesting history of Signing Day over on the Rutgers blog Bleed Scarlet. The only thing I would add to their excellent summary is ND grad Joe Terranova, whose annual program recruiting rankings were mainstream enough to make the pages of Sports Illustrated around Signing Day back in the late 70s and early 80s.

One quote from the Bleed Scarlet post in particular stood out as a perfect summary of college football fans on a day when they might not get all the shiny new recruits from their wishlist.

We needed him. There’s absolutely no point in paying attention to the next four years on the gridiron. I might as well stop following the sport entirely. Oh wait, you tell me there’s another top player looming on the horizon, only twelve months away? Hot damn.

Happy Signing Day everyone.

UPDATE:

Sweet fancy Moses. Manti Te'o just put on the Notre Dame hat.