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With one ESP down, we have a better idea of how the new recruiting Super Bowl will work going forward.
This is only the college football Early Signing Period’s second year (it starts at 7 a.m. local on Dec. 19 and ends Dec. 21), and there’s plenty about its future to learn.
But we know a lot more this time around than we did in December 2018, when the entire Division I football world was feeling it out as it went along.
1. Not every player will sign in December, but the majority will.
In year one, 68 of the top 101 recruits signed in the inaugural Early Signing Period, while the rest waited until the traditional National Signing Day in February.
When the ESP is finished, around 70 percent of all eventual signees will have signed. That was 65 percent in 2017, per 247’s count. Some teams were closer to 50 percent, and some were in the 90s.
There will still be a lot of talent on the board after the period ends, but February’s Signing Day won’t be quite the big spectacle it was in the past.
2. So the final class rankings will be close to set after Dec. 21.
Most likely, Alabama will have all but formally locked in the No. 1 class by then. But with several dozen four- and five-stars probably still out there, there will still be jockeying in the spots immediately below the Tide, along with a top-10 recruit or two who choose to wait for the ESPNU spotlight in February.
3. The ESP’s action will be almost entirely on Wednesday, the first day.
When the sport did this for the first time, some of us expected a steady flow of signings, but little of interest happened the last two days. There will probably only be a few stray commitments on Thursday and Friday.
Given that coaching staffs aren’t on the recruiting trail during the ESP itself, it makes sense that not much would change for a prospect who’s already decided to sign in December.
It’s a good idea to follow your team’s site and have ESPNU on a side screen on Wednesday. After that, just check your usual college football news sources every so often. You’ll probably have a sense of which remaining targets for your team are likely to wait until February.
4. Teams that just made coaching changes will do worse ... for now.
The Early Signing Period benefits coaches, generally. They’re the ones who pushed for it, seeking more stability earlier in the recruiting year. The old system forced them to wait until February to know for sure which players they’d get. Coaches never like volatility, and their American Football Coaches Association asked the NCAA and its conferences to institute the ESP.
But they’ve also given themselves a new challenge.
Most new hires happen around the beginning of December. In the past, that left new staffs two months to line up their first classes. Even before the ESP, coaches were doing a lot better in their second classes (their first full recruiting cycles) than with the ones they’d signed after two months.
New coaches now have two or three weeks to get most of those classes set. The results in 2017 were as expected. Teams that had just made new hires signed small crops during the ESP, leaving lots of work for February.
For instance, Herm Edwards’ Arizona State had 11 December signees and the country’s No. 71 class immediately after the three-day spell.
One potential benefit, though: having plenty of room on Signing Day. The Sun Devils added 10 more players in February and finished 37th, or where they’d been the two prior years under Todd Graham.
5. The Early Signing Period is a mixed thing for the people who are supposed to matter most in all of this: the recruits.
Most head coaching moves are done by the time the ESP begins. But assistant coaches will still be moving around for a few more weeks, and there’s often a January head coaching surprise somewhere.
There will be players who sign in December, thinking they’ll play for specific coaches, but who wind up not. It happened frequently in the class of 2018, when the introduction of a 10th FBS assistant coach greased the carousel. That’s the inevitable consequence of a system that restricts player movement but not coach movement.
Despite that uncertainty for players, college coaches told SB Nation entering the inaugural ESP that they wouldn’t consider players actually committed if they had offers and didn’t sign. In 2017, 80 percent of committed players signed during the ESP, per 247Sports.
Anyone who’s verbally committed and chooses not to put pen to paper during these three days goes on decommitment watch, though there are unique cases as well as good reasons for some recruits to hold off until February.
The ESP is also a negative for late bloomers who might have attracted little college interest over the first few years of their high school careers. The high school season’s over by the time the ESP starts, but moving up the entire signing timeline means less time for college coaches to evaluate those players.
It can be a good thing for one type of recruit in particular: the one who’s near the bottom of his team’s class and might get dropped late for another player. Stories pop up a few times each winter about recruits who had their offers yanked right before they could sign. The ESP doesn’t eliminate that, but just as coaches get earlier guarantees with the ESP, so can signees who might be on the fringes.
6. Also, this is rough timing for teams that have mid-December bowls.
FCS has only one game left, and it’s in January. But 2018 has nine FBS bowl games during the week of the Early Signing Period. The Frisco, Gasparilla, Bahamas, and Potato are during the actual ESP days themselves.
It’s not like staffers are going to miss incoming signatures because coaches are bowling, but that’s a lot of attention to pay at once.
7. The ESP has changed how the public follows recruiting, though it hasn’t necessarily made things better or worse.
It means two long days (Dec. 19 and Feb. 6) of hat ceremonies on ESPNU. There are still enough uncommitted players in February that the traditional Signing Day has a big-event feel, and the net EXCITEMENT FACTOR of recruiting season goes up a little bit.
More significantly, it allows fans, media, players, and teams themselves to hone in more on just a few key stories once February comes around. Signing Day becomes more about finishing strong than about building everything all at once.