Two parts of the beat I don’t particularly like:

1) Football’s national signing day.

2) The summer conference meeting circuit

national signing day (That’s not a typing error at the start of the sentence. Rather, I refuse to adhere to the frenzy to capitalize national signing day and make it a holiday. Shut up. I’m the writer and editor) bugs me more and more every year. Players act more outrageous and more selfish every year, and, frankly, they’re encouraged and facilitated to maddening degrees.

That’s a soap box I don’t want to get on right now, because kids aren’t alone in the wrongdoings and schools and coaches aren’t made to shoulder a fair share of the blame, but know that while I appreciate the meaning of the day, I sort of detest the mania. I know too many people who work in recruiting at different levels and who lose their minds, slowly but surely, to continue to ignore this. It’s nuts.

As for the summer conference meeting circuit, this happens every year: A  conference gets a few days on the calendar. It gets reporters in a room. It gets on the bully pulpit. A league pushes this, that and the other, seemingly for its own gain, and there’s no rebuttal until the next conference gets its couple of days on the calendar. Best of all, the best defense for a league pushing its wishes is “Because.”

So color me really surprised and kind of disappointed to find satisfaction in this story. Bo Pellini picked up one of the hot-button items from the summer conference meeting circuit, spun the proposed early signing period on its head and came up with a game changer: No signing day because no signing period!