Perhaps Twitter wasn't the best engine to use for some of the opinions I expressed last night in the wake of the Thompson commitment ceremony.
Look, I am excited about getting highly rated and talented kids to "commit" and especially enroll at my alma mater. Very excited. There's some energy in Athens that is most definitely translating on the recruiting trails. Now, for this next class, if Richt and Co. would stop recruiting anyone who is not an offensive lineman I would be really happy. Kidding. (No, not really.)
All that aside, and as I have said before here and here and then also here, the recruiting process is a game. A commitment is nothing more than momentum for a program and some balloons and cake for kids with five stars by their name. What is a five star? Well, sometimes even the "experts" don't know. So is it really that much more exciting when a "five star" commits than a "three star"?
Maybe, when they actually sign. Maybe.
My reality is I love the guys that wear the G and get coached up during their time in Athens to the point where the plays they make on the field actually change the outcome of the game in our favor. My reality is that many of these teenagers get chewed up and spit out by the system in which the process operates. When it's okay to joke about high schoolers getting lied to by grown men, speculated about anonymously on message boreds, praised/chastised/threatened/taunted on social media, or to put them in between one program's magnificent facilities and another's that is even more magnificenter, well then, perhaps it's time to re-evaluate.
Truth is, most (if not all) of you love Trenton Thompson about the same as you loved you some Da'Rick a few years ago. If that's the case, eventually you have to ask yourself - if college football recruiting is indeed a game, am I the one getting played?
