Trends, Not Names, Key on Signing Day

Officially speaking, the Naval Academy football program doesn’t participate in National Signing Day. Officially. Yet as diehard college football fans huddle around their TVs in anticipation for the dust to settle on where their team “ranks” as recruits make their collegiate commitments, Navy fans won’t be left completely in the dark. But names – and hype – aren’t what they should be following.

Follow @GoMids It’s inevitable I guess. As long as college players use up their four years of eligibility and graduate, and as long as a fresh batch of prep players eye the college gridiron and beyond, National Signing Day and the recruiting bonanza of late January will stay with us. If nothing else, February 1st – the day in which high school seniors fax in their binding letters of commitment to play football for an NCAA institution the next academic year – has given fans a yearly moment of excitement in an otherwise uneventful offseason, allowing them to turn their attention to the proverbial generation next.
Navy fans aren’t immune. In my three years of covering football recruiting for the Scout.com network on GoMids I’ve spoken to dozens of recruits and fielded questions from many more fans. Everyone wants to know about Player X and Player Y, and if the commitment of Player Z represents the next Kyle Eckel or next Ricky Dobbs in the program. The attention paid to the future names and what each grainy highlight film could represent to a team looking to restock and reload will never be dulled for the fan, and I myself have been guilty of all but proclaiming (on more than a few occasion) that Players X, Y, and Z will be the next batch of Navy stars.

The more I look back on these last few years though, the more I’m beginning to understand the especially difficult proposition of not only accurately gauging prep talent, but of projecting it onto the Division I football field amidst an institution as dynamic and complex as the Naval Academy. A crapshoot? No, it isn’t. But it still isn’t exactly a laser guided bomb.

There have been some to take this idea in recent years – especially in relation to the three service academies – and use it as Exhibit A as to why even following recruiting is a waste of time. After all, we’re starting from the premise that the majority of players who choose to attend Army, Navy, and Air Force for football aren’t the kinds of young men in it for the National Title or NFL dreams. And for the most part, you’d be right in saying that. But understanding how the three service academies recruit against each other – and how they recruit against similar academic institutions and Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) schools, reveals trends worth following. Today, as recruits make verbal pledges to the Naval Academy by joining their teammates in ceremonies across the country, it’s best to remember that these trends, as opposed to the players themselves, will be worth studying.

The names are still important, no doubt. An Alexexander Teich came from somewhere, and so did a Ross Pospisil and so did a Shun White. But the attention paid to them out of high school, as compared to some of the other, higher profile recruits to “sign” with Navy in recent memory, was disproportional to the effect on the field.

It’s always interesting to look at past Navy commitment lists from a given year to illustrate this point. A “commitment” on Signing Day can reverberate through the online community of fans, but there’s no guarantee that the given player will even make it to the Naval Academy. Some, like former Rivals.com3-Star running back and current William and Mary player Keith McBride, head transfer out of the Naval Academy Prep School and never make it to Annapolis. Others, like 2009 high school graduate and highly acclaimed recruit Brandon Killebrew, are dismissed from due to academic reasons and leave early in their career. And some, like current Navy reserve linebacker Vinnie Mauro -- who turned down several BCS schools to play at Navy – battle injury setbacks and have yet to make the impact some fans expected.

Lack of on-field success at Navy not an indictment on any of these young men, of course. Going to college, much less at the Naval Academy and much less in the demanding environment of a Division I football player, isn’t easy. And that is the point for fans to keep in mind today.

Instead of projecting one recruit as a fix for a graduating senior or another as a “sure-fire” playmaker, it’s best to look at the trends. We’re talking about how Navy recruits head-to-head against Air Force and Army, why recruits are committing to Navy, and where recruits who spurn Navy end up. And through my discussions with recruits up to this point, it’s apparent that when it comes to trends, Navy is definitely trending upwards even after a down season.

In fact, the way prep players have talked about their commitments, you’d never know Navy went 5-7 instead of 7-5 in 2011. In many of the recruits’ eyes, the image of an Academy football players is stronger than ever, thanks largely in part to the idea of the ‘Brotherhood.’ It’s almost always the first thing recruits mention to me for why they committed to Navy, and 9 out of 10 times it’s that intense bond of camaraderie which they say sets Navy’s players and coaches apart and above Air Force.

As we read the reports of commitments and spend the next week or two surveying highlight films and googeling past high school games, it’s best to remember not to get our hopes up when it comes to earmarking the individual names. Someday, two or three years down the road, they’ll be important. But for today, Signing Day, it’s the trends that matter.

Adam Nettina has been covering college football at the Naval Academy for the past five seasons. He is the former Sports Editor of the Utah Statesman and currently writes his own sports and pop-culture blog called Option Pitch and Waffle Crisp.