Notre Dame's Role in the Old National Signing Day Surge

The first Wednesday in February used to be perhaps the biggest non-Saturday on the college football calendar

Nov 25, 2006; Tallahassee, FL, USA; Florida State Seminoles running back (28) Lorenzo Booker runs during the fourth quarter against the Florida Gators at Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee, Florida. Gators defeated the Seminoles 21-14. | Jason Parkhurst-Imagn Images

Believe it or not it's officially National Signing Day across college football.

Now that the early signing period has come and that the transfer portal has forever changed the game, the day hardly even registers on the college football calendar.

But there was a day that this felt nearly as big as any regular season gameday.

Notre Dame fans know the highs and lows of signing day hits and misses. Perhaps none came as a bigger surprise in a good way than when Manti Te'o signed his national letter of intent with the Fighting Irish in 2009 but the most shocking miss by the Golden Domers changed the college football landscape forever.

Lorenzo Booker Will Always Sting Notre Dame Fans

Back in the fall of 2002 there wasn't Twitter, Instagram, Tik-Tok or any other social media and the ability to see highlights of high school athletes wasn't anywhere near today's Hudl accessibility.

Maybe you'd get to see a touchdown run that would take three minutes to load on the old dial up internet, but you certainly weren't getting extended highlights.

Regardless, Lorenzo Booker was the biggest name in recruiting that cycle as the star running back from California was deciding between Florida State, Notre Dame, USC, and Washington.

Booker was scheduled to hold a press conference on Sportscenter on National Signing Day about where he had chosen to go. Instead, it turned into the first real college announcement by a player - and according to Booker himself, that happened by accident.

“Notre Dame was like my high school but a lot bigger,” Booker told the Tallahassee Democrat 15 years later. “Their linemen were huge, they played on national television every week. I loved Tyrone Willingham and, I mean, it’s Notre Dame.”

But Booker awoke that day with mixed feelings. Booker says in that piece that Florida State had always been his dream football program, and despite many close to Notre Dame thinking it would be landing the big fish in Booker, the talented running back remained true to his heart.

Lorenzo Booker Announcement Impact Years Later

From that moment on the evening Sportscenter forward, college football and sports for that matter forever changed.

Tables on a hat suddenly became a thing for players nationwide and when social media invaded our lives, commitment videos soon turned into short feature films.

Part of me misses the wildness that was national signing day a handful or so of years ago. It was essentially the Wild West of college football on full display for an entire day, but essentially that Wild West now has just changed locations, moving further west to the land of the transfer portal and early signing period.

If it wasn't Lorenzo Booker it would have certainly been someone else short-after that was the first, but Notre Dame will always have a small part (of heartbreak) attached to the moment that forever changed how we take in college commitments from teenage athletes.

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