College Football's National Signing Day

National Signing Day was never much more than a blip on the radar for college football fans, but in recent years with the advent of the big-time sports media such as ESPN, things have changed.

What used to warrant a single article in the newspaper and almost no TV coverage is now a day-long event on ESPN, ESPN News, and the ESPN college sports network on February 6th as the top high school players in the country will announce where they're going in a flurry of decisions all on the big day.

Some people question whether all this exposure is good for high school athletes or not. High school athletes used to be amatuers in the truest sense of the word, but now high school games are even broadcast on the ESPN family of networks during the football and basketball seasons to showcase the big stars of each sport who might be attending a major college. Sites like rivals.com and scout.com charge good chunks of money so people can read every little piece of rumor and innuendo on a where a top recruit might be going.

Of course, it is mostly just the big stars like LeBron James for example and Terrelle Pryor, the most famous football name of 2008, who are getting the exposure. There are still tons of kids at high schools who play sports and live a normal life.

The main reason why signing day has become such a big event is because it offers hope for fans of teams across the country, much like the NFL and NBA Drafts have developed such a huge following and huge TV ratings. College sports give teams the opportunity to basically go out and sell their program to whatever players they want across the nation as opposed to teams picking in order. Fans of the most successful teams often dream of landing a superstar-filled recruiting class that can take them to the national championship game since there's it's much easier to build a team of star when the teams aren't picking in order.