National Signing Day is Christmas for college football zealots

No, of course I don't mean a silly little thing like Super Bowl Sunday; I'm talking about today. Some sort of ... pagan lunar calendar ... officially decreed the first Wednesday of the second month National Signing Day, when all over America high school seniors can officially plight their troth to a college football program.

Basketball has its national signing day in November, but for grown-up college football zealots especially in the South, today is National Regression Day. It's like going back to being a kid anticipating Christmas again -- who will Santa bring to my alma mater's team?

Of course, some of the top recruits, the so-called four-star and five-star prospects, have already announced where they will be matriculating. Several of them chose the Under Armour High School All-American Game of a few weeks ago to declare their roster of choice. That is an invitation game played between two sides known as -- let me say this slowly now: Team Blur and Team Highlight. The game is shown nationally on ESPN, so it's a top priority place to get good exposure for your declaration.

The highlight this year -- or maybe it was the blur -- was one player, ranked seventh best in all the land, who went on ESPN to announce that he was going to Alabama, while his mother sat next to him scowling, and later declared: "LSU Tigers, number one. Go, Tigers." Since verbal commitments don't count, maybe Mom will have swayed him from Tuscaloosa to Baton Rouge by the time he can sign that official letter of intent today. Either way, more face time.

The very best players will have massive television coverage when they sign -- and remember now, these are teenage kids. There is one popular psychological rendering that because LeBron James never had his own national signing day since he skipped college, he instead staged his own national signing day when he chose his next pro team to recreate the high school experience he never had. As we found out: when I was a child, I spake as a child, but ...

Guaranteed, as at the NFL and NBA drafts -- when the selected choices have baseball caps of their new teams plunked on their heads -- all the players who publicly announce their decisions today, will surely do so by putting on the cap of their new school. This, of course, also happens now when teams wins championships. Break out the baseball caps.

Putting on a baseball cap to make a statement has become such the fashion that I fully expect, on the night of this coming November 6th, either Barack Obama or the Republican candidate will greet victory, not with a speech, but simply by appearing in public and putting on a baseball cap that says "PRESIDENT."