If this year's National Signing Day taught us anything, it's the fact that the new early signing period appears to be a total game-changer when it comes to college football recruiting.
With nearly three-quarters of the 2018 recruiting class signed, sealed and delivered back in December; much of the drama associated with the first Wednesday in February was missing. A day typically known for its absurdity seemed almost mundane by comparison.
But while an early signing period in college football has long had its fair share of critics, the three-day window for prospects to sign their national letter of intent has also won over a lot of coaches and recruiting experts.
"I think this will be declared a success," said Tom Luginbill, National Recruiting Director at ESPN. "... If the first time out; 72 percent of the class signs and you have a favorable impression by all parties, then I think it's only going to grow."
One benefit of the early signing period was the reduction in the number of de-commitments heading into a typical National Signing Day.
"I think it helped clean up January," said Mike Farrell, National Recruiting Director for Rivals.com. "There were a lot less de-commitments in the month of January then there had been in the previous years. I think that's one of the things they wanted to cut down on. It really gave schools an opportunity to put a piece of paper in front of a kid and to have the kid have the accountability to sign.
"I think it gave everybody the opportunity to have some truthful communication in the month of December rather than the verbal lies: 'I'm committed, I'm 100 percent committed' and then they end up taking visits and flipping on you."
Having most of your recruiting class signed and in some cases, already enrolled in school, was a huge bonus as well.
"It's certainly a success for mid-tier programs that are able to hang on to their commits and don't have to babysit commits into January," adds Barton Simmons, National Recruiting analyst for 247Sports.com. "It's certainly a success for coaches having a bit more stress-free January."
For Notre Dame's Brian Kelly, who signed a top 10 class according to 247Sports.com, it provided a sense of relief.
"You weren't running around the country trying to keep them committed to Notre Dame, which allowed us to be so much more intentional on the next few players that we signed," Kelly said Wednesday.
New Florida coach Dan Mullen sees the earlier signing period as an opportunity to get out and introduce himself.
"I think the early signing day opened up a window for the opportunity to get out there and really just do some more recruiting as a head coach. Not even with the prospects but with the coaches," said Mullen, who's Gators finished with the No. 14 class. "You have the opportunity to get into high schools and sit down and talk to high school coaches and meet high school coaches because as of Saturday, I'm not allowed to go on the road recruiting again until September."
While there were plenty of positives to take from the early signing period; it also had a fair share of drawbacks.
The mid-December date seemed to push the coaching carousel into overdrive as administrators looking to avoid missing out on the early signing period made changes a lot sooner than in previous seasons. Of the 20 coaching changes in 2017, 13 took place between Nov. 20 and Dec. 7, leaving new coaching hires a little less than two weeks to salvage a recruiting class.
"As a new staff coming in, it was a major challenge," said first-year coach Josh Heupel, who was hired at UCF on Dec. 5. "You're trying to hire your staff, get to know your players and trying to recruit the current recruiting class and you're trying to do that in that time frame."
Heupel likes the new early signing period adding, "It's shortening the cycle a little bit in a positive way because it gets long for everybody."
Georgia may have secured the top overall recruiting class this period but it wasn't without its challenges.
"Preparing for a College Football Playoff and having that early signing period is really challenging to focus and get the attention of the coaching staff and the support staff in the right direction," said Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart, whose team played not only in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day but also in the National Championship Game against Alabama on Jan. 8.
Smart also sees the new signing period placing a larger amount of focus on the smaller pool of prospects.
"I actually think what happened is it narrowed the scope of a lot of top programs onto certain guys, and it created more pressure on the remainder of the people who weren't signed, so the pressure went from being dispersed among 20 players to being on three or four players for every team, and that was tough to go through that with some of the families of the guys you finished with, because they had a big burden on them," he added.
For the upper tier programs, many of which wrapped up the majority of their recruiting class back in December, the new early signing period has opened the window to long-term recruiting.
"What I notice now, for the most part, most of the coaches were 2019 recruiting," added Lemming. "That's not what the rule was meant to do. It's not meant to give these guys extra time to recruit for next year but that's exactly what happened."
One thing that's abundantly clear about the new early signing period is that it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
Mid-American Conference commissioner Jon Steinbrecher, who was on the NCAA's football oversight committee which pushed the measure back in 2014, suggests we give the new legislation time.
"We need to let this thing breath; we need to give it two or three years and really get a good sample of data to analyze it," Steinbrecher said. "We need to really let this thing work for a little bit."
While Steinbrecher has heard a lot of positives, he knows there are still issues that may need to be addressed down the road.
"Part of what I would continue to look at is the date. Is the December date the right date? Or could it, in fact, be an August date or a July date or earlier?" he added. "[There are] a lot of moving parts."
