A MODEST PROPOSAL: EDSBS FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE NLI

 

There's a lively discussion afoot in the Twitters right now regarding the necessity and evils of national letters of intent. We are sick to death of recruiting stories already and it's only a week after the title game, so let's try some immersion therapy and get out in front of this thing:

Haters and logicians, we hear you, but take it back a step for just a second: We don't think this is a marketable idea. We do, however, think it would be hysterically funny if nobody, including the coaches, knew who was going where until players' parents' cars started pulling up to the athletic complexes in August.

Just picture it: Frantic assistant coaches scurrying about with clipboards, checking off areas of need that have been filled! Notre Dame staffers turning out all the lights at the football offices and hiding behind furniture barricades as they're swamped by wave upon wave of ginger hopefuls! Tom O'Brien forcing a surplus of defensive ends to fight to the death for his affections with plastic sporks! And forget plane trackers: webcams on every corner set up by stalwart message-boarders will record every incoming license plate.

So much ink, year after year, is devoted to cataloging every whim of these young, understandably impulsive guys. Do you remember how much of an asshole you were at 18? If you had the means, would you not love to dress five of your friends up identically and leave your house in six identical cars, each bound for a different storied D-I program?

Wouldn't it be awesome for Lane Kiffin to stride out to meet a vaunted blue-chipper, only to have the kid whip off his baseball cap and reveal himself to be Bai Ling in one of those rubber masks from Mission Impossible? Would Lane Kiffin then attempt to sign Bai Ling? YOU BET YOUR ASS. THIS IS WARTIME. Will Alabama claim another title after successfully spike-stripping all those idyllic roads into Auburn? INSTITUTIONAL ESPIONAGE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP PAAAOWL! Is Bryce Brown attempting to get himself retroactively reenrolled in high school just to be a part of our can't-miss plan? Does Howard Schnellenberger's pet puma shit in the woods? (Actually, we have an idea that thing shits wherever it pleases.)

Laugh now, but when Tom Luginbill's booked for reckless endangerment after being discovered clinging to the undercarriage of a five-star linebacker's Chevy Tahoe by the hooks he's had surgically attached to the bloody stumps where he chewed off his own hands, you'll thank us for opening up this bold new frontier. You'll see.