I am not much of a recruiting junkie. During the season I am much more concerned with who is presently on the field rather than who might be, and other than checking into things enough to form a vague idea of the identities of this year�s crop of phenoms and which might be interested in Tech, I pay little attention.

It is only after the bags are unpacked from the bowl trip and the men's basketball team has dropped its first Big South game that I amble over to the recruiting pages to see what�s up. I then bone up on the targets, paying the closest attention to forty times and who else is recruiting those the Tech staff and TSL recruiting aficionados are most lusting after.

As Frank has often remarked, most prospects have a pretty good idea about where they will be playing their college ball well before late January, but there are always a handful of �Most Wanted� kids that drag things out far longer than either the coaching staff or I would prefer. I often become irked at the time recruits spend mulling over offers and wonder why they can�t make up their mind as easily as I did when, after glancing over acceptance letters from Tech, Duke and Randolph-Macon, I quickly chose the school whose associated costs my parents agreed to pay -- but meeting forbidding private school tuition is not a problem for any of the �A List� recruiting targets.

My recruiting interest level reaches a moderate stage for a fortnight or so, and I find myself staring intently at TSL commitment status pages, often remarking to myself that where a teenager chooses to attend college is a fairly ridiculous thing to be obsessing over, but then again, my fascination with Tech football over the decades has been judged excessive by a number of people, most of them ex-wives.

My recruiting interest gradually increases and reaches its apex when I blow off Signing Day to spend it in front of my computer, watching mostly the same names scroll by over and over, trying very hard to adhere to Will�s request that the TSL signing page not be reloaded more than once a minute and sometimes succeeding, calling a friend in the RTP who was concerned that the half hour it took him to drop the kids off at school and drive to work might cause him to be forced to wait a few minutes to learn of the breaking recruiting news, creating a mailing list of those whose killjoy employers would not allow them to get their immediate LOI information from the Net, fielding a few phone calls requesting the latest up-to-the-minute updates and others wanting to know if anyone had gotten away, and one from my Hoo lawyer buddy that resulted in a profanity-laced tirade that I seriously doubt he uses in a courtroom as he attempts to obtain freedom for the hardened criminals he tends to represent when I smirkingly informed him that the Ellis LOI had been received in Merryman rather than the UNIVERSIT� DE BOURGOGNE, cursing the Recruiting Gods myself when the excitement of a possible late addition didn�t pan out and finally driving the fifteen miles to Hargrave to find out just what in the heck was taking so long.

You see, this is casual interest at best.

Another recruiting season has come and gone, and the Tech staff has put together a class that, we all hope, will keep the good times rolling around Lane Stadium for the foreseeable future. Bud Foster must be fairly pleased, as he has accumulated an entire defensive unit, and this time the linebacker targets didn�t bail at the last minute. We saw the addition of more of the legacy Hokies the staff is rather adept at recruiting, and a nice accumulation of that quality most desired by Bud, speed. A few got away, primarily on the other side of the ball, but they always do, with a few notable exceptions, and the staff finds a way to muddle through.

Glancing around the rest of the BE, as I am prone to do, one notices that Temple coach Bobby Wallace ceased the job hunting that is becoming more desperate by the day long enough to cobble together a class that included twenty-two JUCO players, a sure sign of what he thinks the Templing of Temple by the Big East will cause to happen on North Broad and making sound very hollow the assurances by AD Bill Bradshaw "Of course we will still be playing football in 2005. Why do you ask?" It would seem that if a Temple team exists by 05, it will not only have the customary lack of fans, budget, stadium and any interest whatsoever, but also a lack of players.

It�s also hard not to notice that Syracuse coach Paul Pasqualoni missed just about all of his top targets for the second straight year. This will show up on the field in a couple of years, maybe even against Tech, if we're lucky. Last year Pasqualoni blamed his lousy recruiting on the events of 9/11. I would list some possible excuses Paul P. could employ this time around, but have learned that some around here don�t appreciate that sort of thing. Use your imagination.

Message boards are great sources of optimism during recruiting season, outside of that snarling bunch of Orangepersons not particularly impressed with anything Pasqualoni and are not hesitant to anonymously vent their spleen and complain that unless the guy who has won or shared three Big East champions is immediately fired they will, uh, uh, do something. There are numerous posts on most all of them along the lines of �I predict that big Jimmy Williams will start immediately on the defensive line and make All-America� that proved so prescient. My personal favorite was a thread from a Rutgers board speculating as to whether they would be competing for the MNC by 2004, a turn of events not seen since their miracle season of 1869. There is always hope, and it is on display by the ton in February.

While there is always wild confidence voiced among the faithful that this will be the class to accomplish great things for just about each and every school, the reality will be a bit different. History teaches us that at least one of the more highly regarded members of the Tech class and everybody else�s will not pan out. The fact is that none of the kids signed by anybody has yet to prove anything on a DI-A football field, and some never will.

Recruiting rankings are subjective speculation, at best. Anybody notice how many MNC titles Mack Brown has amassed at Texas to go along with his recruiting titles? The Baby Blue Spin Machine at North Carolina always loudly trumpets the incoming class as among the best in the land, no matter the sport, each and every year, until the incumbent coach is fired for poor recruiting.

Locally, there is the example of good old George, where the recruiting efforts of Danny �Ain�t Too Proud To Beg� Wilmer were always judged to be superior to Tech�s right up until the point George was shoved out of the Bastille because of what was judged, after the fact, to be superior Tech recruiting. For all of the talk about that windbag algroh�s masterful recruiting, where he is demonstrating that one of the keys to solid recruiting classes is to recruit many of the same players year after year, he has yet to get within ten points of Frank.

I find a bit silly all of the hoopla associated with recruiting. The last I heard no Sears Trophy was awarded for recruiting success that won�t be accurately determined until around 2007. The games will still be played and scores kept and results determined not by which team signed the high school players with the most number of stars affixed to their names by oftentimes suspect Internet recruiting �services,� where, for a fee, you can read their rankings, unlike TSL, where, for a fee, you can read not only Chris� rankings but my column lampooning the process, but by the quaint method of which team scores the most points. I prefer it that way.

Of all the new players coming into Tech this year, the one I most look forward to watching, assuming he doesn�t succumb to the temptations of professional baseball, is Kenny Lewis, Jr. A number of years ago I had the good fortune to build a new house and sell it to Kenny Lewis, Sr. when he retired from the NFL and moved back to Danville with his lovely bride Teresa and what were then their two small children. I have retained over the years a mental image of Kenny Jr. as a rambunctious three-year old who found the empty spaces of a new house perfect for demonstrating the speed over which we hope to soon be marveling. I also hope to see a repeat by enemy defensive players of the futility demonstrated by Teresa in chasing him.

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