I absolutely love this time of year. After 15+ years in this business, I've seen it all and have developed a lot of opinions over that period of time. Following are just some general thoughts -- some random, some opinionated and some just thrown out for debate.

(1) You want to take a big step in cleaning up the whole recruiting process? My first step would be to reduce the number of "official" visits from 5 to 3 schools. Prospects do not need to officially visit 5 schools before making a decision. Prospects get the opportunity to take as many unofficial visits as necessary and most do take advantage of this by attending junior days, summer camps and games during the season. And the majority of the prospects just have 1 or 2 and sometimes 3 favorites in the process, even though they list so many schools/favorites. One example of abuse is when a prospect commits to a school early in the process and is truly committed to that school, but decides to take a "fun" trip in December/January because a school still has trips available and the prospect wants to have some fun. This is a waste of time, money and there's nothing good comes out of this for the school or the prospects.

(2) I'm the minority in that I do not think the NCAA should have two national signing periods. Its the popular opinion of most right now that an early period is needed to take some of the pressure off of coaches and the prospects. In my opinion, you can't have an early period without opening up the evaluation window. Also, you are opening up pandoras box for waivers and hardship transfers. Additionally, it is not that difficult to set a plan in motion to be a December signee these days. Most recruits know going into their junior campaigns that they are a Division I athlete. They can set the academic plan in motion to be able to enroll in January. So, essentially, we already have two signing periods.

(3) When an assistant goes to another school late in the recruiting process, don't let them recruit prospects from that recruiting class -- make them only recruit juniors and below. Its a simple way to bring some integrity to a situation. Here you have a coach for 3 years telling Player A that University X is the best place on the planet, then he gets a new job with greater responsibilities and double the salary and starts recruiting Player A for University Y, and all of this happens during a 30 day window. It just doesn't make sense and puts the recruit in a position to make a rush and emotional decision. Players sign with Universities not coaches.

(4) Its the time of year for many media members to say stars don't matter. Do we really need to address this? Just because an NFL roster, or even a Super Bowl team roster, is loaded with 2 and 3 star players it doesn't disprove the fact that stars do matter and the teams that year end and year out sign the most highly rated 4 stars and 5 stars when BCS championships. Over the past decade, teams like Florida, USC, LSU, Texas and Alabama will be the first to tell you that stars matter, otherwise their recruiting budgets would be a tenth of what they are today. There's always going to be exceptions and outliers, but the teams that consistently posts top 5 to top 10 recruiting classes play for the Crystal.

(5) The recruiting services are getting better every passing year. Recruiting rankings as a whole are better than they have ever been. Services like 247Sports, Rivals, and ESPNU have the resources and opportunities to see prospects live and on tape in situations to make highly educated projections. Camps, combines, the internet, 7 on 7s and the list goes on and on .... As a whole, there's a tremendous amount of integrity in this industry and the evaluators from all the services work hard to give readers the most accurate evaluation possible. Fans scream bias, but almost all of the guys in this industry from all of the major services are credible, accountable and truly do their best for their constituencies. And the bottom line -- like it or not -- the product is more accurate than it has ever been and it will show in the future. 247Sports is just a little bit better than everyone else, because we've hired the best of the best ;-)

Have a great Sunday.