FAYETTEVILLE -- Say this for the NCAA and those who run it.
Nobody beats their tenacity. For like a provoked pit bull clamped on an intruder, the NCAA fastens on a bad idea and won't let go.
So no surprise that last year's bad idea of a college football December early signing period returns this year and likely will run into perpetuity.
It was modeled on the bad idea implemented decades ago of college basketball's November early signing period. That bad idea remains today and apparently won't go away regardless what graft the ongoing FBI investigation uncovers.
NCAA officials posture hand-wringing moral outrage at the corruption so often attributed to AAU hangers-on and runners of shadowy associations with shoe companies. Many lament that high school coaches aren't the go-to folks in basketball recruiting anymore.
But when you sign high school seniors in November, it's not the high school coach but the spring and summer ball periphery having the player's ear with whom the college coaches deal with most.
The term "deal" sometimes becomes literally defined.
As for the shadowy shoe company associations, athletic apparel companies and college athletics have a long, embedded reciprocating history of I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine.
It's why you see college teams selling out their colors and traditions to appear more costumed than uniformed.
Football, with high school coaches still in charge of the summer 7 on 7 competitions, for the most part doesn't have the summer extracurricular coaching associated with basketball.
But this football early signing period was a bad idea and remains one recommencing Dec. 19.
Schools just changing coaches like Arkansas did hiring Chad Morris last December are at a significant disadvantage as especially are those recruits committed to sign with the previous regime.
Obviously, Morris better likes 2018 early signing with a full year to recruit this class.
But will the recruits and the game itself like it year after year?
Last year SMU, which Morris left for Arkansas, played in the Frisco Bowl on the very day opening the December signing period.
Ditto this year's Frisco Bowl entrants.
Even situations with staffs now appearing set for 2019 could change radically. Unforeseen domino effects occur on sudden openings causing some presently satisfied to seek greener pastures.
They leave behind those they just signed.
The head coaching carousel generally has stopped by the traditional February signing date. Most everyone signing then can presume to be coached by those who signed them.
The opportunity for early signing increases pressure on prospects to graduate high school in December so in January they college enroll for offseason workouts and spring practice.
That's a lot to forsake, that last high school spring relatively carefree of proms and maybe playing a spring sport you won't play again, to start college and college football ahead of schedule.
Recollecting 45 years of Arkansas anecdotal evidence, it sure seems more exit prematurely after starting college football that soon than those January enrolled freshman playing varsity ball the following fall.
Sports on 11/24/2018