LIKE IT IS Signing day's significance can't be overstated

LITTLE ROCK — Long before national signing day for college football became close to a national holiday, a story went around about Lou Holtz while he was Arkansas' head coach.

Everyone knows he won immediately at the UA with Frank Broyles' recruits and things were slipping a little when Broyles suggested that Holtz step up his recruiting efforts, that it would be a good idea if Broyles met the young men when they visited the campus.

One morning Holtz called and said he had a 6-4, 230-pound linebacker from Texas on campus and that the young man ran the 100-yard dash (yes, that used to be the measure of speed) in 11.0 seconds.

Holtz told Broyles that Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahomawere all recruiting the young man. Broyles said bring the linebacker by his office as soon as possible.

Within five minutes Holtz was knocking on the door and brought the young man in and introduced them.

Broyles told the Texan that Arkansas was about winning football, but it also was about graduating players and asked whether the kid would mind if he gave him a short test.

The kid said no.

How much is six plus seven?

"13," the kid answered.

Holtz then yelled: "Give him another chance!"

Of course, that's a joke, and these days no one jokes about recruiting. If there is anything in college football (and other sports) that has changed dramatically in the past 30 years, it is recruiting.

It used to be that reporters would show up on signing day, were given a list of who had signed and then tried to round up a quote or two. That was long before the internet and recruiting Web sites such as rivals.com and scout.com, which charge monthly fees and are making a mint because of the interest in recruiting.

Then along came Otis Kirk,who didn't invent recruiting but was a pioneer in making recruiting a news beat and, in some ways, a sport of its own.

Otis would work off a typewriter to produce his newsletter about prospects, along with mug shots of some, and then mailed them to subscribers.

Not long after Otis came others, some specializing in basketball and others in both football and basketball.

Then came the Web sites, and recruiting has become almost a year-round phenomenon.

Richard Davenport, the Recruiting Guy, writes three columns a week for this newspaper and a blog (arkansasonline.com/ recruiting) that had more than 400,000 views just in the month of January.

A few Saturdays ago Richard,his wife Megan, Shawn Arnell and yours truly all happened to be in Fayetteville for the Mississippi State basketball game and the big recruiting weekend.

During lunch we threatened to either text Richard so we could have a conversation with him or throw his phone away.

After the game we were having a late dinner when he received a call. He jumped up, left his food on the table, told us to make sure Megan got back to the hotel safe and was gone.

It seems some dads of the recruits were sitting around the hotel lobby shooting the breeze and thought it would be nice if Richard was there.

Incidentally, many of this year's recruits have been on the Arkansas Radio Network on Thursday nights with Richard,and almost all of them have mentioned the incredible reception that night at the basketball game when they got a standing ovation on their way to their seats.

Anyway, tons of text messages and phone calls are just a part of his job.

As you can tell by today's sports section, everyone was quite busy with national signing day Wednesday.

Actually, the planning for today's sports section started more than two weeks ago because recruiting has become major news in the world of perspiring arts.

Recruiting has become a beat all of its own, and in some ways its own sport.

Wednesday was one actionpacked day at the newspaper office and on Richard's blog, and that's no joke.