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.

Keenan Allen is from Greensboro, North Carolina, and had verbally committed to Alabama in November, but signed with Cal on Wednesday -- Photo by Don Callahan/InsideCarolina.com

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’ class No. 11 in the country and ranks Cal’s top two signed recruits – Allen and linebacker Chris Martin —  as the No. 5 and No. 18 recruits in the entire country.    Cal supporters will ignore ESPN.com’s scoreboard, which puts Cal’s class at No. 20 in the country and ranks Allen and Martin as the nation’s No. 33 and No. 111 recruits, respectively.  They could even choose different scoreboards for the same game – taking rivals.com as the final word on team rankings, but pointing to scout.com for player rankings.   (Scout.com has Cal’s class ranked No. 29, but has Allen ranked No 5 and Martin No. 10 overall.   How one service can rank Martin 10^th and another 111^th makes the whole thing seem a little shaky, but on we go.)

Stanford folks would opt for ESPN.com, which has the Cardinal class ranked No. 15 nationally, and pooh-pooh rivals.com, which has the Cardinal at No. 27.  

 Ranking the Cardinal class has been an interesting process.   The Cardinal had 24 commitments back in October, when it was ranked among the top dozen classes in the country.  Stanford added nine player commitments since then, yet wound up signing just 22 on Wednesday.   This seems to be addition by subtraction, or is it subtraction by addition?

The thing is, commitments seemed to come and go with Stanford, partly because some committed players failed to qualify academically and had to go elsewhere.   However, that was not the case with linebacker Jordan Zumwalt, who was admitted to Stanford and gave Stanford a “soft” commitment, whatever that is.    He ended up signing with UCLA, and there is no word on how soft or hard that signing was.

The top Cardinal signees are probably Nottingham, a senior at Monte Vista High School in Danville, and defensive end Blake Leuders, who had committed to Notre Dame during the summer but changed his mind after Charlie Weis was fired and committed to Stanford just last week after Stanford hired some former Notre Dame assistant coaches.   Neither was ranked nearly as high as Cal’s Allen and Martin, however.

Elsewhere in the Pac-10, USC’s class is ranked No. 2, No. 7 and No. 8 by those three services (although rivals.com may move USC to No. 1), and UCLA comes in at No. 6, No. 8 and No. 11 in those three reputable services.

Nationally, Florida had the best haul – or so say the services – and even came into southern California to snag the nation’s top defensive end, Ronald Powell.

To no one’s surprise, the teams that did the best on the field in 2009 also did the best on signing day.   The top three teams in the final rankings – Alabama, Texas and Florida – all were ranked among the nation’s top five recruiting classes by all three services.

And then there’s Boise State.   The Broncos, ranked No. 4 in the final 2009 pol, and a near certainty to be in the top five of the 2010 preseason poll, limped in with the No. 82-ranked recruiting class, according to scout.com, and No 96 by rivals.com, just behind Florida International.

Just a hunch here, but we’re betting Boise State has a better season than Florida International.