We’ve been busy tracking changes within the NCAA the past several days, from the historic vote authorizing total cost of attendance and four-year scholarships — historic because of what happened, but also because student-athletes were represented in the process — to an apparent leaning toward an early signing period in college football.

Seems like we’ve been discussing and debating this for a long, long time now, but given the climate and how people are not only willing to change, but actively changing the rules to better accommodate the sport and its participants, this seems more likely than not. Now, this is not to say there are no opponents, because there are some. Stanford’s David Shaw is not “alone,” as he professed, and he draws up some valid talking points about the motivation for the rule as well as the way student-athletes can skirt the issue.

That said, he’s outnumbered and the 32 Division I conference commissioners will act on a recommendation made at last week’s NCAA meetings to usher in a Dec. 16 date. Some conferences had proposed earlier dates, but this one gained and maintained the most traction, and for good reason.

West Virginia, which supports the total cost of attendance as well as the four-year scholarship, even if the latter doesn’t seem like a big change from the program’s normal practice, is also in favor of the pre-Christmas date, as well as one other change.

Say a school plans to sign 25 players and 15 sign in the early period. Rather than spend the period between the end of the regular season and signing day working to keep all 25 in line, coaches instead worry about 10 — and truth be told, they can probably afford to look around a little more for kids who are wavering elsewhere or suddenly available.

But that’s a lot less traveling for coaches. It’s fewer days of seeing one prospect in the morning in Charlotte, one in the afternoon in Atlanta and one in the evening in Broward County. If the recruit in North Carolina and Florida signed in December, then the work that day goes to the player in Atlanta, but also to the future.

“I think some schools will save money, which matters, but it’s not like people won’t go out and recruit,” Dorchester said. “But coaches are not going to want to get on planes if they don’t have to. If they go on a home visit with a kid you’re targeting and the kid’s a senior, maybe you spend that night with him and spend the morning checking in on a bunch of juniors in the area.”

With that in mind, there’s a small change that ought to accompany the large one. The spring evaluation period lets coaches visit a school, check on grades, watch a track meet or a spring football practice and not much else. There can be no contact. Dorchester believes the evaluation period could be redefined.

“I think that could be changed to where you can have contact with rising juniors at that time,” Dorchester said. “It could be something as simple as, ‘Hey, you can talk to underclassmen just on campus.’ I think that would be good and I think that would be something coaches would welcome.”