For those of us obsessed with all things college football, signing day is an oasis in the dried up desert that is the time between the end of the BCS Championship and the beginning of spring practices.

While it’s fun to engage in banter and bragging about how awesome the Zooker is at recruiting with my friends at other Big Ten schools, this year’s coverage of signing day has shown me that we might be taking the recruiting process too far and we are changing the mindset of our young athletes.

College football coaches love to say that “recruiting is like shaving – if you don’t do it everyday, you’ll look like a bum”, and there is no doubt that Ron Zook and his coaching staff follow this motto. But in recent years, the media has also adopted this philosophy when covering the recruiting trail, and young athletes are being put under a very powerful microscope at such an important time in their development.

High school football entered mainstream America exposure in 1990 with H.G. Bissinger’s book “Friday Night Lights”, which examined the 1988 season of the Texas-powerhouse Permian Panthers. The book exposed the pressures the young athletes on the team feel from college recruiters, coaches and parents throughout the season to perform and win.

The book was made into a film in 2004, which then spawned a dramatic television show that shared the same name. Later, some reality shows were also created in attempt to capture the culture of high school football.

Our obsession was further fueled with the growth and development of the Internet. Recruiting-specific Web sites like Rivals.com and Scouts.com dedicated themselves to getting the breaking news on commitments and rating the recruits on a five-star scale, which described the athletes’ skills and potential to succeed at the next level.

These Web sites watch recruits all year and constantly interview them, call them and text message them to get the breaking news to the subscribers who pay for “insider” information.

Looking at a player profile on one of these Web sites, you’ll see an athlete’s physical skills (40-yard dash time, vertical jump, etc.), list of schools they are considering and how much “interest” they have in those particular schools, and when they are going to take official visits to a campus recruiting them. The only thing they don’t show you is what the guy ate for breakfast everyday – although I’m sure some recruiting fanatics would love to know that too.

With all this hype and pressure – mostly by adults – what kind of impact is it having on these young men?

Sometimes I feel like we forget that these athletes are 18-year-olds getting ready to leave their homes and friends into a world of major college athletics and academics. They sit in class and obsess over their forty times when they should be thinking about prom. They get text messages from coaches when they should be hanging out with friends. Their mail boxes are flooded with recruiting letters when they should be packed with acceptance letters.

We also constantly hound over these players to make a decision, but we forget that they are being pushed and pulled in all different directions. Take prize-recruit Terrelle Pryor, who is currently torn between Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State. Fans and coaches want Pryor to make a decision, but we don’t take into account what he is feeling. Pryor is making a choice that will affect the rest of his life. He will be making a choice that could determine his educational and future NFL fate.

We get greedy and want him to choose, but for Pryor and thousands of other recruits across the nation, this is the first step of the rest of their lives.

Football recruiting is a big deal because we make it a big deal. There’s no doubt that these athletes have a great opportunity to go to college and maybe get into the NFL someday, but what kind of message are we sending them with our obsession of everything football?

We neglect the fact that these are young men who are just starting to learn about the world outside of their home. They’re raw. They’re na’ve. Most importantly, though, they’re ready to learn. But what’s the lesson we’re teaching?

With Web sites, TV shows, movies, books and magazines, it sure seems like we’re telling our young athletes that football is what is most important and everything else is second.

Is that the message we want to send them?

Maybe we should examine ourselves as closely as we examine the recruits.

Kyle Betts is a senior in Communications. He can be reached at [email protected].