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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, February 6, 2003

For a day, they're all winners

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

"I think we got a bunch of good ones," the college head football said of his school's recruiting haul.

Pete Carroll at Southern California?

Tyrone Willingham at Notre Dame?

Joe Paterno at Penn State?

June Jones at Hawai'i?

Actually, it was Gary Nord of downtrodden Texas-El Paso, though it could be just about any of the 117 Division I-A head football coaches.

They haven't made a coach yet who can muster an unpromising word on national signing day. Nowhere, not even at the most bottom-of-the-barrel program, will you hear a coach say, "Uh, we didn't get what we really needed," or "wait till next year."

The event known as letter of intent day is a lot like the opening of spring training in baseball: It is the one time of the year when everybody, regardless of recent history, is allowed to project a rosy future and float untethered postseason dreams.

Every running back is a potential game-breaker and every quarterback a can't-miss player. Every school, even those with slim chances of turning in a winning record anytime soon, somehow get exactly what they needed. To hear coaches tell it, if Christmas was like letter of intent day, there would be no need for a "return" line at the shopping mall.

Never mind that in moments of candor, coaches will admit that recruiting is an inexact science — emphasis on the "inexact." It is a point also brought home regularly by the number of so-called blue-chippers who never pan out and the amount of players who weren't on recruiting lists that emerge as stars.

This is where the real fun of signing day is to be found — three and four years down the road. It is in watching Ashley Lelie, an unknown walk-on from Radford High, emerge as a first-round NFL draft pick. It is in seeing Jason Elam, who wasn't even deemed the best kicker in his corner of Georgia, become among the best at his position and, this week, sign the richest bonus ($2.7 million) ever given to an NFL kicker.

The ironies and imperfections of the process are not lost on Rich Miano, one of the coaches who coordinates local recruiting for UH. He emerged as a two-time All-Western Athletic Conference selection and a 10-year NFL veteran despite arriving as a walk-on from Kaiser High who was known more as a diver.

And, then, there are the ones who regrettably got away. Wai'anae linebacker Kurt Gouveia would help lead Brigham Young to a national championship and be part of the Washington Redskins' Super Bowl, yet wasn't offered a UH scholarship.

But for one day every year, each school gets to pretend it has exactly whom — and what — it wants.