Read more on Signing Day
* Signing Day 2015 Live Coverage* Reports have Drew Richmond dropping Rebels for UT Vols* East Hamilton's Martez Durrah switches from UTC to MTSU* McCallie junior Nygel Edmonds already has 22 offers* High Tide again: Alabama closing in on seventh No. 1 recruiting class in the past eight years * Irish's Kareem Orr to play for Arizona State Sun Devils * Area coaches, players like early signing proposal * Auburn-Florida battles could highlight signing day * List of 2015 SEC football commitments * McKenzie eager to continue family heroics with Vols * UTC 'fighting battles' for 'difference-makers' * Tennessee Vols avoiding recruiting fallout from Bajakian's departure * Brady's recruiting path is different * Toser, Brewer finding scholarships scarce for kickers
The commercial has appeared often in recent days on ESPN's seemingly endless collection of channels.
"The dream of the College Football Playoff," it begins, "starts with signing day."
Dreams are good. Dreams are what keep the Chicago Cubs baseball fan, the Kentucky Wildcats football fan and the Wake Forest basketball fan buying tickets year after year after year despite marginal enjoyable return on their investment.
None of those entities has won its sport's highest prize in more than a century (Cubs were World Series champs in 1907 and 1908). They don't figure to reverse that any time soon. But hope springs eternal in sports. Wait till next year, we tell ourselves, forever clinging to championship dreams.
But while more than a few of my friends will take today off to follow the minute-by-minute coverage of college football signings -- heck, Tennessee will even stage football parties around the state this week for Butch Jones to detail the Vols' latest exemplary haul -- could it be that we're chasing the wrong dreams?
Could it be that we might want to dream that these budding young men become honorable grown men over the next three, four or five years that our favorite schools watch over them?
Could it be that all of us should push these programs to prepare them -- as the NCAA loves to tout during its basketball championships each spring -- "to go pro in something other than sports"?
Could it be that the current culture of major college athletics -- its dark side deplorably on display in last week's Vanderbilt rape trial that convicted two former Commodores with two others likely to be convicted later -- has become more nightmare than dream?
Could it be that we've horribly lost our perspective about what dreams should come of this? A "meaningful college degree," as UT's Butch Jones often says, would be a meaningful start. A four-year course in maturity, responsibility, decency and integrity also would help.
But how is that achieved when a player's verbal commitment has become, in the eyes of college assistants, the moment when recruiting really begins? Does that not smack of "There is no honor among thieves"? And if not, shouldn't it?
Within the narrow confines of athletic achievement, all of this matters. There certainly is a correlation between Alabama's outrageous success on the football field the past seven years and three national championships and the fact that when all the faxes are counted this evening, Nick Saban's Crimson Tide may have hauled in their record fifth straight No. 1 class.
As Rivals.com national analyst Mike Farrell told U.S. Today earlier this week: "If you have a top-five class, you're supposed to win. But the No. 1 class always seems to win a national championship three or four years later. You're going to be successful."
At least the program figures to be successful. But what about the players, the ones who've been fawned over by adults who should behave better from the time those players left middle school because they could throw a perfect spiral, run a sub 4.5 40, catch a BB in a wind tunnel?
Less than two percent of college football players reach the NFL. Of those who do, they average less than four years in the league. Then they have to become pro at something besides being a football player. Worse, of those who do make it -- and this goes for ALL professional sports -- roughly 70 percent are bankrupt before they're 50. So all those millions they made? Thrown away.
You could argue it's all much ado about nothing. After all, according to a 2014 UNICEF report, 32.2 percent of U.S. children -- nearly 25 million -- live below the property line, which places the richest nation on earth 36th among 41 wealthy countries included in the study. By contrast, only 5.3 percent of Norwegian kids currently meet this definition of poverty.
Then there's the educational divide between white Americans and black Americans, who will sign most of those Division I scholarships today.
A recent study by the Schott Foundation found that 26 percent more white students graduated from high school in 2010 than the rate of their black counterparts.
"At this rate it would take nearly 50 years for black males to graduate at the same rate as white males," said John H. Jackson, president and CEO of the foundation. "I don't think the country can wait. I don't think any parent or student can wait for half a century to have the same opportunities, education, jobs as their white male counterparts."
When you consider that fewer than 3,000 young men are expected to sign scholarships today at the highest level of college football, it could be argued that focusing so much energy and consternation on their futures is a waste of time, particularly given all the advantages they'll have the next four years as scholarship athletes.
But these young men often are the faces of their communities, especially in lower-class neighborhoods where they are, however briefly, realizing the dream of hope and opportunity. So to waste that dream by both arriving and departing with the wrong value system trickles down to those who desperately need to dream realistically, rather than focusing all their energy into becoming an athlete or entertainer.
Again, the numbers are small. But the symbolism is large. It's time for every institution of learning in this great land that fields a Division I scholarship football team to begin a national graduation day for its student-athletes. Have a party and pass out hats with the logos of the companies they'll soon be working for other than in the NFL.
And for those who complete their degrees with a 2.5 GPA or better on a 4.0 scale without off-field embarrassment, the NCAA needs to approve a parting gift ranging from $10,000 to $25,000 per player -- depending on each school's wealth -- as a Welcome to the Real World bonus.
Celebrating these gifted athletes' entrance into college is all well and good. But celebrating their exits as responsible, respectable college graduates capable of inspiring the next generation to focus on a career in something other than pro football would be far better for us all.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.