Back in October and November, many of high school’s best football players accepted some of the nation’s most prestigious college football teams into their schools on recruiting visits. Those visits are restricted to the NCAA’s Evaluation Period status, because the rules of recruiting are serious at the Division I level, especially for football. During many of those visits, and during their junior years between football and the end of the summer, kids are inundated with calls, letters, and stops at the front door by college coaches. They arrive as innocent as children, and as prepared as a cold calling salesman. They want your kids, and they’ll do anything short of breaking the rules (and more than that on occasion) to get them.

Today is National Letter of Intent Day for Division I college football scholarship winners. It’s the day when verbal commitments, which are worth only about as much as the air they’re muttered into, go out the window, and the dotted line comes into play.

I watched one of my best friends and next door neighbor growing up go through this process, and it’s much more than any 17-year old should have to endure, whether he is garnering a couple hundred grand in education and opportunity or not. My buddy Zat was a 6′7″, 300lb. offensive linemen in high school. He played center his senior season. I was a junior backup QB that year, and the few opportunities I had to play with him during his senior year were daunting. He was so big that I took snaps with my knees almost locked up straight. I’m not tall, but at 5′11″, I’m at least average. The explosion of the ball into my top hand was like the recoil of a 12-gauge shotgun. If I were unprepared it would have knocked me over.

Zat was also our long snapper, an ancillary but important skill to have when you know you are going on to the next level. On summer days before the season, I would stand 15 yards across the front lawns of our homes as he rifled snap after snap back at me at velocities that would have stung most hands had the weather been crisp. I was embarrassed to throw the damn thing back to him.

Zat was recruited by every major Division I college team. I watched Gene Stallings (then of Alabama) come to his front door; legendary Notre Dame offensive line coach Joe Moore, Skip Holtz, then Lou Holtz; Joe Paterno, and many more. His official visits included Notre Dame, Penn State, Alabama, USC and Miami, a veritable Who’s Who of college football. He had full scholarship offers for every one of them.

When Holtz came to see him, there was a buzz in the neighborhood. For various reasons, we all wanted him to choose Notre Dame. Holtz was gracious in receiving people from the neighborhood. I sat in Zat’s living room as the diminutive and lisping field general regaled our high school coach and athletic director, and Zat’s entire family with stories of his coaching days, until it was time to get serious about why he was there. He spoke to Zat with such fervor and enblazened heat that you could feel the room get hotter. You could sense the intensity. You could feel the pressure.

Zat made a commitment to Notre Dame that night that he followed through with on this day — National Letter of Intent Day. He lettered four years and started three. An injury cut his career short as his senior year wound down. He was on the field when they beat Florida St. in 1993. He was the impeccable long snapper in that blizzard game against Penn State. He played in Cotton Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls. But I’m sure he wonders what would have happened had he chosen Penn State, who was number two on his list. Would he have gotten injured? Would the NFL career he had laid out in front of him come to fruition?

These are the questions these kids face today, and so far, before the official day of signing, Florida, USC, Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas are leading the recruiting wars. That could change today. The night Zat committed to ND his phone rang more than 15 times. Each time, Joe Paterno, the legend himself, sat on the other end of the line, trying to convince Zat that he would be making the wrong decision. You become a man when you tell a guy like that you’ve made your decision and you’re sticking to your guns.

How many of these kids are ready to do that?