Signing Their Lives Away

The Phanatic Magazine's Jeff Glauser caps our National Signing Day coverage with this column.

By Jeff Glauser

The moment has come. The one every college football devotee anticipates. The one that will determine if their favorite school will enter – or remain in – the national spotlight as juggernauts…or jugger-nots.

For Johnny All-Star, high school hero, everybody’s All-American, his moment awaits behind a makeshift backstage. On the other side sits a throng of reporters, cameras ready to pop off a blinding amount of shots, like a horizontal fireworks display.

Johnny now approaches the podium, basking in the glory of the moment. He even toys with the media a little, whipping out two different baseball caps with the school logos of his finalists, viciously teasing all of those painted faces – young and sometimes frighteningly old - out there watching the event live from their TV’s or streaming Internet video. Johnny’s ego is rising faster than his pulse did that night he was flipping channels and first came across Cinemax After Dark.

Seventeen year-old Johnny makes his selection and, in an instant, goes from student to savior.

Six years later, statistics show that he’s more likely to sack your groceries than he is to sack the opposing quarterback.

The simple explanation? HE’S A FREAKING KID!!

Coverage of the whole National Signing Day spectacle, which you’ve certainly seen here on this site as well as elsewhere by now ad nauseam, has essentially taken children – already facing a life-altering situation of leaving home and embracing independence for the first time – and placed them into a pressure cooker that most are just not prepared for.

One can say that they’ve entered a game of mental Survivor: escape the scrutiny of the microscope and often unrealistic expectations and then live to tell the tale after collecting your fortune.

ESPN.com, as well as many others, features a Top 150 prospects list. Four years from now, even the most fanatical of college football followers will be familiar with just a fraction of them. For many, their 15 minutes of fame will be literal – the exact length of their press conference.

Some may say, “Hell, that’s still 15 more than I’ll ever have. Live it up while it’s there.” However, to go from obscurity to popularity and back to obscurity in a relatively short period of time is not so easy to adjust to. Just ask Vanilla Ice.

And furthermore, I reiterate, THESE ARE FREAKING KIDS!! Only a year or two earlier, growing sideburns was considered a major accomplishment.

During next year’s signing day, I challenge you to imagine the event with Johnny Smartguy, state calculus champ, as the featured player, playing up to the throng of reporters, basking in the glory of the moment, leaving all the college calculus fans on the edge of their seats: Will he pick Calculus Powerhouse Harvard or local sentimental favorite Penn?

Yeah, it’s silly. It all is.

Feel free to discuss your favorite high school calculus all-star with Jeff at send2jg@hotmail.com.