In less than two weeks, every University of Tennessee football fan - wait, scratch that: every major college football fan everywhere - will be hanging on which five-, four- and three-star players sign with which schools in their sport's first-ever early signing period Dec. 20-22.
And to an extent, you can't blame them. After all, there's got to be some correlation between all those No. 1 recruiting classes Alabama coach Nick Saban has signed over the last seven or eight years and the fact that the Crimson Tide is the only program to appear in each of the first four College Football Playoffs, including this season's.
But if you want to know why rating high school kids isn't an exact science, you need only to look at Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield, who was presented the 2017 Heisman Trophy on Saturday night.
Rated as a three-star recruit coming out of high school in Austin, Texas, Mayfield had college offers from only Florida Atlantic, Rice, Washington State and New Mexico.
Deciding he wanted more, he first walked on at Texas Tech, became unhappy there despite putting up excellent numbers before a midseason knee injury, then left Lubbock and walked on a second time at Oklahoma, which had been his favorite team as a high schooler.
According to Mayfield during Saturday night's Heisman presentation, he walked up to then-OU coach Bob Stoops and said, "I'm Baker Mayfield and I want to play for you."
Replied Stoops: "I know who you are and you'll be given the same chance as everybody else."
Three seasons of football later following a redshirt year, Mayfield has turned in some of the best numbers in his sport, capping his career this season with 41 touchdown passes, just five interceptions and a pocket completion rate of 73 percent.
Of equal importance, at least for some us, he has guided the Sooners into the playoffs, where they'll face Georgia in the Rose Bowl in one semifinal game, with the winner facing the Alabama-Clemson winner in the national title game on Jan. 8 inside Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
That's not to say that 2016 Heisman winner Lamar Jackson wouldn't have been deserving of a repeat after throwing for more than 3,000 yards, running for more than 1,700 and doing it all with a far weaker supporting cast than Mayfield was surrounded with.
And much like with Mayfield, few colleges saw the exceedingly swift and elusive Jackson as a quarterback, but rather a wideout or defensive back.
"But I always saw myself as a quarterback," said Jackson, who's all but certain to declare for the NFL draft next spring. "I've never played any other position."
Then there was Stanford running back Bryce Love, who finished second to Mayfield in Heisman voting in every region of the country after running for nearly 2,000 yards this season.
In what is surely one of the oddest statistics in the history of Heisman Trophy candidates, Love had a higher high school GPA (4.5, thanks to Advanced Placement courses) than his time in the 40-yard dash (4.3).
"I do play football, but I want to contribute to the world," Love said Saturday. "I want to help take care of kids (by being a pediatrician)."
Befitting so well-balanced an individual, Love also said, "I have the mindset that I have to get better at everything."
In perhaps the most light-hearted moment of the evening, when his parents were asked what they thought he could improve on, his father replied, "Get rid of the candy."
Offered his mother with a smile: "A few more calls home to mom."
Mayfield had to make a few calls home this year that no son wants to make. There was an arrest for public intoxication in Arkansas in February. There was the over-exuberance after a win at Ohio State in September, when he planted an OU flag at midfield of OSU's stadium. There was a crotch grab toward the end of the season at Kansas after the student body got on him a bit.
The last incident forced OU coach Lincoln Riley (Stoops retired after last season) to strip Mayfield of his captain's tag and bench him for the start of the final regular-season game of his career.
Said Mayfield on Saturday evening: "I'm a 23-year-old kid that's having fun, but I have a lot of room to grow."
We can all grow. Every day. In every way.
We can also learn from Mayfield's Heisman win that while those football programs expecting to compete for national championships no doubt need their share of five-star recruits, those high school players judged less than that can still make a huge impact.
In this case, for the first time ever, a walk-on has won the Heisman.
"There's something to be said about having to earn it," Mayfield said. "To all the kids out there, don't ever give up."
And to all the adults out there who might allow this first-ever early signing day to ruin their Christmases, relax. As Jackson and Mayfield have unequivocally proven, it's not where you start on some recruiting board, it's how you finish your college career.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com