Are football games won in February?
A GRIP ON SPORTS
There are young men and women (yes, women) all over America waking up today believing it's the most important day of their lives. Most already have an idea of what they are going to do. They have made up their mind and have decided on their future path. See, today is the day young men and women declare to the world where they are going to play football and soccer and field hockey and track and field and cross country and men's water polo (bet you didn't know about those last five sports did you?) next season. It's letter-of-intent day. Read on.
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• First off, I'm not going to make fun of you if you are, say, a 43-year-old man with a wife, three kids and a hefty mortgage and yet you still refresh your computer every 12 seconds to see the latest signings for Alumni U. If that's your thing, good for you. And if it matters to you that your school signed one four-star guy, a whole boatload of three-star guys and six fellows who no one ever saw before, then why should I laugh at your obsession? After all, it is your choice how you waste, er, spend your life. It could be worse. You could be wasting, er, spending it sitting in front of a computer every morning, pounding out blog posts to keep guys with pseudonyms like Bear4Life or myGFisHotterthanyous informed. So to each their own. But what cracks me up is the depth the obsession has developed. It's another reflection of our Internet-driven society I guess. I had to turn off my TweetDeck feed this morning because the constant interruptions from "WOOFS" and the like was making it impossible to search the Web. And the barking was coming from a college football coach in the region. Jeez. OK, I admit people in my chosen life-long profession feed the beast as well (and I will spend three hours this afternoon on the radio talking about it) so there are no innocents here. It just seems to be out of hand, that's all. Yes, I understand why people care if their alma mater signs the best class of recruits in the nation – or the best class in the school's history, which is seemingly always the case. But video cameras on the school's cheerleaders every time a recruit faxes in a LOI? Or a bobblehead next to the fax machine? Or cannons going off in the quad, saluting each new signee? Really? And the Internet chatter. There were fewer tweets when Beyonce started singing Sunday. I guess I should just lighten up and get into the swing of things. After all, I'm going to spend the day perusing the UC Irvine water polo website, hoping beyond hope the Anteaters can sign the best Hole Set in the nation. There's a kid from Orange County Prep Day School – he was rated six-and-a-half stars by Scoutingrival.com – who is going to be the best player ever. I'm sure of it.
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• Washington State: Christian Caple has you covered with the Cougars' LOIs, updating the school's list over and over on this blog post. That comes on the heels of his morning story on Mike Leach's first fully developed recruiting class. He also had his usual morning post today with lots of recruiting related links. By the way, if you want to know how the rest of the world sees today's activities, you can read this story. ... Not to forget basketball, which is in the middle of its season, Christian had this blog post yesterday from Ken Bone's press conference.
• Gonzaga: The Zags' Dan Dickau will be inducted into the WCC's Hall of Fame during the basketball tourneys in Vegas next month. Jim Meehan has more in this blog post. ... Canadians are beginning to become really crucial parts of many college teams, not just Gonzaga's. ... BYU, which travels to USD tomorrow, is hoping to beat out St. Mary's if the WCC receives just two NCAA bids (we know GU is getting one).
• Whitworth: Tuesday games at Whitman haven't been all that kind to the Pirates recently. Last night's certainly wasn't.
• CCS: Chris Derrick's weekly women's basketball notebook introduces you to a CCS star, Riley Holsinger (pictured).
• Preps: We were at Ferris High last evening to witness Central Valley's boys clinch their second consecutive GSL title. Colin Mulvany was also there and put together this photo story. ... Greg Lee was in North Idaho, where Post Fall's girls secured a state berth by defeating Coeur d'Alene. ... Greg also did the rest of the GSL boys roundup and put together the GSL girls roundup. ... We also can pass along boys and girls roundups.
• Chiefs: Chris catches up with Riley Proft, who leads the Chiefs – and the WHL – in penalty minutes. ... The Winterhawks earned another Player of the Month award. ... Victoria raced past Seattle last night.
• Mariners: Michael Bourn (pictured) is still on the market. Should the M's forfeit a high draft pick to sign him? Larry Stone has an opinion on that. ... Ryan Divish has a feature in the News Tribune on third baseman Kyle Seager. ... Ah, the glamorous life of a minor league broadcaster.
• Sounders: The Timbers were able to get past the short-handed Sounders in the exhibition opener for both. ... Sigi Schmid has some things to talk about.
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• As we mentioned, we'll be on the 700 ESPN today from 3 to 6 p.m. (you can listen here), then we'll be at WSU's signing day party at Northern Quest. Of course, we'll also be back here tomorrow. Until then ...
