Archive For The “signing Day” Category
(Photo Credit: Steve Hockstein/NJ Advance Media)
Yesterday, Lehigh announced the signing of 12 football student-athletes to National Letters of Intent, or NLI’s.
Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen in regards to student-athletes, whether they would sign national letters of intent, or not.
What ended up happening was a floodgate of signings, not just at Lehigh but across college football.
I entered Wednesday thinking that a good target for announced Lehigh football recruits was six, based on little other than my history of observing this stuff. As it stood, I saw schools like Delaware announcing six football recruits signed before breakfast, and Lehigh had inked their sixth recruit well before I had my leftover General Tso’s chicken for lunch.
It wasn’t just amongst Patriot League or FCS schools, either. Penn State signed 21 recruits, including one of the top athletes of the Lehigh Valley, who flipped to the Nittany Lions from UCLA. Some estimates speculate that when the dust settles on this early signing period, over half of eligible football recruits will have signed with their schools.
For the student-athletes and their families, committing during this time offers some great benefits. It binds the schools’ scholarship offers to the student-athletes, and can pull the plug on some of the signing-day circuses that have sprung up in years past. It also moves much of the pomp and circumstance to the end of the second marking period, an academic lull where tests are complete and there is time to have a celebratory signing ceremony in the library.
Overall, early signing day seems to be a major win for the student-athletes, who get to commit earlier, get to worry less, and get to experience the celebration for their collegiate signings that is becoming more and more the norm at a time when it suits them better. Whether you love the process or hate it, this way of doing it seems to have a lot of benefits, and it’s here to stay.
Read more »
(Photo Credit: Steve Hockstein/NJ Advance Media)
Yesterday, Lehigh announced the signing of 12 football student-athletes to National Letters of Intent, or NLI’s.
Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen in regards to student-athletes, whether they would sign national letters of intent, or not.
What ended up happening was a floodgate of signings, not just at Lehigh but across college football.
I entered Wednesday thinking that a good target for announced Lehigh football recruits was six, based on little other than my history of observing this stuff. As it stood, I saw schools like Delaware announcing six football recruits signed before breakfast, and Lehigh had inked their sixth recruit well before I had my leftover General Tso’s chicken for lunch.
It wasn’t just amongst Patriot League or FCS schools, either. Penn State signed 21 recruits, including one of the top athletes of the Lehigh Valley, who flipped to the Nittany Lions from UCLA. Some estimates speculate that when the dust settles on this early signing period, over half of eligible football recruits will have signed with their schools.
For the student-athletes and their families, committing during this time offers some great benefits. It binds the schools’ scholarship offers to the student-athletes, and can pull the plug on some of the signing-day circuses that have sprung up in years past. It also moves much of the pomp and circumstance to the end of the second marking period, an academic lull where tests are complete and there is time to have a celebratory signing ceremony in the library.
Overall, early signing day seems to be a major win for the student-athletes, who get to commit earlier, get to worry less, and get to experience the celebration for their collegiate signings that is becoming more and more the norm at a time when it suits them better. Whether you love the process or hate it, this way of doing it seems to have a lot of benefits, and it’s here to stay.
Read more »
With a little over a week to signing day, the incoming football class of 2021 is in real focus.
I’m always hesitant to jump the gun on verbals to Lehigh. I’ve been around this long enough to realize that commitments can change.
But I’ve also found that when you get this close to signing day, you’ve got a fairly good picture as to what the class looks like.
All verbals are considered “verbals” and are very much unofficial until signing day, but many student-athletes have tweeted their commitments and their tweets are included below.
So a week before signing day, here’s some information as to what we know here at LFN about the incoming class.
(A huge thank-you to Rich Heelan and Todd Cuddington, who have done a great job as they always do tracking recruits. Their constantly-updated spreadsheet is here.)
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On this icy Wednesday, Division I athletes across the country were signing their National Letters of intent.
Below the flip, find a montage of different National Signing Day pictures from WR Sasha Kelsey, OL Tim O’Hara, LB Cal Coffman, DE Justin Gille, WR Troy Pelletier, OL Kadeem Smith, DL Harrison Johnson, DB Quentin Jones, and – my favorite snapshot of all, to my left – strutting LB Hobson McCain.
(I’ll keep adding more signing day pictures to the post as I find them!)
The forecast in Eastern Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley tonight may call for snow and ice, but that’s unlikely to keep a lot of happy families heading to high school libraries and gyms in this area.
That’s because tomorrow is National Signing Day, the college football equivalent of Christmas.
Across the country, in some of those high school libraries and gyms, some of those students will be posing with a Lehigh hat next to them, or on their heads, to indicate that they’ve chosen Lehigh as the place they will be attending college. (Like rising junior WR Derek Knott, above, a few years ago at his signing day.)
Anticipating an announcement tomorrow, we look back. What do we know? How are we doing? Is the next LB Nigel Muhammad, RB Keith Sherman, FS Tyler Ward or WR Lee Kurfis in this class?
Everything we know thus far will be revealed below the flip.
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