Regarding an early signing period, is there a realistic solution?

The more quotes you read from coaches, the more you understand how the NCAA turned into the bureaucratic sludge of molasses it currently is. 

In an attempt to take an unnecessary burden off coaches' backs, the NCAA floated the possibility of adopting an early signing period for football. In the days since then, two veteran and well-respected coaches have vehemently opposed that idea, with reasoning that makes a lot of sense.

"What's going to happen is, if a kid wants to change his mind late after the early signing period, he's going to appeal and that appeal is going to go through because the committees that decide those appeals, they always give in towards the student-athlete," Stanford head coach David Shaw told ESPN.com.

"So you have a kid that might be 16 going on 17 that commits and then really has a chance to think about it and changes his mind and we're going to try and hold him to it. "On top of that -- and I'll be honest here, which is rare for a football coach in a setting like this -- but we have a lot of kids that don't know if they're going to get into school until after that early signing day," he continued.

"So we're going to punish the academic schools just because coaches don't want a kid to switch their commitment? "People can make whatever argument they want, it boils down to that. ... Coaches don't want to keep recruiting an entire class all year."

Of course, Shaw approaches the situation from a self-interested perspective. The Cardinal secured three commitments in their recent class in the final days before National Signing Day, and - as one of the few schools that places the proverbial cart behind the horse - many Stanford recruits don't secure admittance to one of the nation's toughest schools until late in the process, so an early signing day would be useless for them. 

Would a number of coaches pressure recruits to sign early, before they're truly ready to make a decision? Yes.

By the same token, are there a number of kids whose minds are truly made up before their senior year, but still have to endure recruiting pitches from other schools for months on end? Absolutely. 

Are there coaches who would love to fill up their class by August just so they could stop recruiting? Yes.

By the same token, are there coaches who are forced to expend uncounted physical and monetary expense to keep re-recruiting the same kids who would've been happy to sign in August? Absolutely. 

Speaking to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I thought Georgia head coach Mark Richt had an equally compelling point: "I always say 'Be careful what we ask for ''because I don't know what that will do to our recruiting calendar ... I'd be afraid to change it. I don't want to turn the regular season into such a recruiting frenzy that you can't even coach your team on a weekly basis. I enjoy coaching football, too.

"I think if you moved the signing date up, I think you push more official visits to the football season. Sooner or later, they'll say 'We don't want all these official visits during the season. Why don't we move them to the summer?' Then we'll have official visits in the summer, and no one will get any time away. Not me, not our assistants coaches, not the kids, not the high school coaches, and not the families. Where does it end?"

If you're the NCAA, how do you not throw your hands up at this point and revert back to the status quo? You'd have an easier time uniting the ancient Greek city states than getting football coaches to agree on a recruiting calendar.

If anyone out there has a solution to the early-signing day issue - let alone the host of more pressing problems facing college football - forget about making a run for president of the NCAA, you might as well make a run for the White House in 2016.