The Rules Reconsidered: It’s not Early Signing Day; It’s Preemptive Transfer Day

So here I am, staring at a blank screen, listening to “New Recruit” from the Eric Clapton album Rush—you know, that Lili Zanuck film from the 90s about undercover cops who try to infiltrate a drug ring and find themselves hooked on heroin in the process. I’m sitting here, sweating and stewing over my keyboard, working my best to provide you, dear Reader, with yet another well-informed article, by someone in the know, about the arcana of the rules of collegiate football—in this case, Early Signing Day (which I’m told is important, hence the need for capital letters) for prospective collegiate football recruits. Unfortunately, as you may have guessed had you read at random any of my other articles titled Rules Reconsidered, I know next to nothing about anything of any kind to any degree for any purpose, practical or ideal, public or private, if it be sports related, and this makes gleaning useful information difficult if not impossible.

I am told by trustworthy authorities—anyway, I trust them—December 15 was Early Signing Day. And according to my partner in crime, Brett Gibbons, in an article published yesterday on the KillerFrogs site, TCU fared well during the proceedings. Evidently, TCU has reason to believe such outstanding athletes as Chace Briddle, Micheal Ibukun-Okeyode, Kyron Chambers, and Terrence Cooks have either signed NILs, NLIs, or committed to TCU or expressed an interest in transferring to TCU from another program, or simply told someone somewhere they would like to one day be a Frog. Yay for us.

Now, you might be wondering, as I was, why there would be such a thing as Early Signing Day in the first place. You might even wonder, like I am, who admittedly knows nothing, what makes signing anything so difficult that it requires at least two attempts (I would like to submit for the record that even though I have never played competently a sport in my life, I have been able to inscribe my name unaided on a document since kindergarten, and have been able to do so in cursive since second grade).

And if you wonder that, you might wonder, like I am, if there is an “early” signing day, might there be a “late” signing day? (As of now, the lawyers do not seem to have that one figured out). Anyway, having fallen afoul of Hemingway’s dictum to “write what you know,” (as is obvious, I am deliberately doing the opposite), I went in search of a reason why there would need to be an “Early Signing Day” as against a much more concise, much more definitive “SIGNING DAY!”—and guess what?

I couldn’t find anything.

I could, however, find plenty of information of what Early Signing Day is, and it reeks of litigation as much as my too-cushioned shoes beside the dog’s favorite squatting spot reek of something else.

To wit: in Gibbons’ terrific article, he mentions that an NIL is not to be confused with an NLI. Ol’ Brett was kind enough to clarify to idiots like me what an NLI is: National Letter of Intent. However, NIL remained unaddressed. So I looked it up: Name, Image, Likeness. Dear reader, if these are not obvious legal terms, I don’t know what are. And I’ve never known a lawyer I liked, much less trusted, save one, my TCU college roommate, who has spent his entire professional life trying not to practice law.

All this is to say: if it benefits TCU, I propose we have Lawsuit Day, whereby we can simply sue any school that persuades one of our recruits to, as they say, de-commit. For that matter, we could even have Early Lawsuit Day. Then we’ll be able to rid ourselves of these ugly little acronyms while at the same time filling our roster with the toughest names in college football. Need I say more?

Anyhow, lawyers or no, contracts or no, it is clear to me that Early Signing Day is tantamount to what were once called “promise rings”—rings promising engagement rings promising marriage. They’re as useful as a document signed in invisible ink or a contract with nothing but a 50-cent postage stamp—going somewhere, some time and best of luck to the recipient.

All that matters is that TCU ultimately generates an offense and defense that win. And that’s the bottom line.

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