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  • Today’s Big Number — 0

    0 -- Number of recruiting services that do not have Florida's recruiting class ranked as the best in the country.

    0 -- Number of recruits committed to Bay Area colleges who are rated higher than defensive end Chris Martin, who committed to Cal

    0 -- Number of Bay Area high school players rated among the nation's top 100 recruits

    0 -- Difference between a player ranked No. 100 and one ranked No. 300 by one of the countless internet recruiting services.

    0 -- Number of college head coaches who will say they did not get every recruit they wanted

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Reader’s Digest version of signing day
Posted On Feb 4th, 2010    Comments 1 Comment

We at jakestakeonsports like to boil things down to their essence, a challenging but worthwhile endeavor in the overpublicized event – and we use that term loosely – known as college football signing day.

So despite the tons of statistics and data and back stories you can get via the internet, here’s all you need to know about college football recruiting as it pertains to the Bay Area:

1. Cal added one of the nation’s top prospects (safety Keenan Allen, who had originally committed to Alabama) at the last moment, making the Bears recruiting class one of the top dozen in the country, according to one reputable recruiting service.

2. Stanford dropped in the rankings in the final days, but signed the highest rated Bay Area high school recruit – quarterback  Brett Nottingham — although local high schools were noticeably short on highly rated talent this year.

3. Florida signed the top recruiting class in the country, although some late additions by USC may move the Trojans into the top spot in rivals.com’s rankings.

4. UCLA and USC had the highest rated recruiting classes in the Pac-10, and it seems the departure of Pete Carroll and the hiring of Lane Kiffin did not appreciably hurt the Trojans’ recruiting.

5. Signing day is a weird sporting event. 

There is no on-field competition on signing day, yet there is extensive advance publicity, detailed game-day coverage and lively postgame analysis.  When the day of competition is over, none of the players really knows who won, but every coach will claim victory and internet nerds will declare winners and losers.   The actual winners will not be determined until three or four years later, and by then nobody cares.

It is the one day fans can choose from among several scoreboards and select the one that’s right for them. Cal fans will pick the scoreboard posted by rivals.com, because it ranks the Bears’... 


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About Jake

Jake Curtis spent 27 years as a San Francisco Chronicle sports writer, most of them covering Bay Area college football and basketball. While at the Chronicle, Jake covered 11 Rose Bowls, 9 football national championship games and 12 Final Fours. He also covered an NBA Finals and a World Cup.


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A Thursday of strange hoops happenings
Posted On Feb 5th, 2010    Comments Be the first to comment

A star player being ejected, coaches planning to go without shoes, a team going more than 10 minutes without scoring and still almost winning, a 35-point performance by a player in a loss, and a player scoring seven points in eight seconds to pull out a game that seemed lost.
 Those were just some of the ...

Stretch run of football recruiting craziness
Posted On Jan 28th, 2010    Comments 2 Comments

The days leading up to college football’s signing day (which is Feb. 3 this year) are some of the weirdest in sports, with players changing commitments and internet recruiting services disagreeing on why they did it or whether it’s a big deal.   All reports are made to seem like earth-shattering news because nobody really knows how ...

No shoes at Cal, No suspension at Stanford
Posted On Feb 5th, 2010    Comments 1 Comment

Cal and UCLA are going barefoot in Saturday’s women’s basketball game at Haas Pavilion.
Well, no, the players are not going sneakerless.  There will still be the customary squeaking as the Bears try to move into a tie for second place (with the help of Stanford on Sunday).
No, it is the two coaching staffs that will ...

St. Mary’s, Cal alone in first in WCC, Pac-10
Posted On Feb 7th, 2010    Comments Be the first to comment

Perhaps a snapshot of the Pac-10 and West Coast Conference standings should be taken right now, because Bay Area teams are alone in first place in both conferences, but neither is feeling particularly comfortable about its status.
St. Mary’s moved a half-game ahead of Gonzaga in the WCC with its 73-57 victory over San Francisco on ...

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