The most popular day for high school recruits to sign their National Letters of Intent could move forward two weeks, as leaders from across college sports work to sort out college football's hectic December.
The Collegiate Commissioners Association, which runs the NLI program, has informed The Athletic it is having "advanced discussions" about pushing the December Signing Day to the Wednesday before FBS conference title games, which this year falls on Dec. 4.
The NCAA created the December signing period -- the third Wednesday of the month -- in 2017, and it instantly overshadowed the traditional February date. The advent of the Transfer Portal and liberalized transfer rules have since created a chaotic stretch of the calendar in which coaches are tasked with securing their high school class, sorting through the Portal, and preparing for postseason games all at once.
Moving Signing Day forward would allow college football to, in effect, hold its draft before free agency instead of trying to do both at the same time. If the current calendar were to carry forward to this year, eight teams would have to lock down their signing classes on Wednesday and then go coach College Football Playoff first-round games on Friday and Saturday.
The concept of earlier fall signing date has the support of the AFCA, in part because it would it would prevent high school players from losing their scholarships to portal recruits.
“The biggest reason we’re doing this is to clear up the football recruiting calendar so the signing period and the transfer portal don’t overlap,” Big Sky commissioner Tom Wistrcill, who chairs the CCA's NLI committee, told The Athletic. “The feedback we’ve received from all coaches is that December is a mess. Especially with the expansion of the CFP coming next year, that just creates more chaos in December. This should help.”
The CCA also discussed the possibility of adding a third signing date, which would actually be the first on the calendar: in June or August.
June is now a crucial month in recruiting, and the thinking is that a signing date there would be supported by recruits and coaches who are looking to get the recruiting process over with before their senior seasons. The fear of a summer signing period has always been that recruits would then let up on the field in their senior year, if not take the whole year off altogether, with their college future now secured in writing.
In a story published by Yahoo, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, citing Texas high school coaches, came out against a summer signing period.
"No one has done any work on what that means for high school football," he said. "We have a responsibility to listen to the high school coaches. What we’ve heard out of the Texas group is that they do not at all support that. Everybody has to be attentive to that.”
The SEC was in favor of an early December signing period, however, and is also pushing to make the entire month a dead period.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.