Stupid Brian from mgoblog took the good Nabokov reference so this is the title of the post...

We're entering the dark ages of college football when all fans have left to grasp at is recruiting.

I've had a little experience trying to cover recruiting through main-stream media outlets and can assure you that it's about 87% bullshit and 13% smoke and mirrors.

The problem comes largely from the fact that media outlets can't check their facts with one of the two parties involved. The schools can't talk about any of the kids specifically until National Signing Day. Until then, you're just taking the kid's word on offers, verbal commitments, etc.

A few years ago (probably 2002 or 2003) there was a kid from upstate New York who went from nothing to a three-star recruit practically overnight. He claimed that he had been offered by Syracuse, Rutgers and a few others and that OSU and someone else notable were at least expressing interest. Unfortunately for him (and the services that ranked him) it was all B.S. No one offered him.

But since there's no way to check up on it (and God forbid a recruiting "expert" watch any film), that charade carried on for a month or two.

Another story was more personal and really pissed me off.

There was a highly-recruited player who was down to OSU and one other Big Ten school. Working at a Columbus TV station at the time, we were trying to figure out where this kid was going to go to school. A recruiting guy we worked with actually called him and the kid said, "I'm going to Ohio State." So we reported, "the kid says he's going to Ohio State."

The next day, the kid verbals to the other school.

The problem is that the longer these kids keep themselves in the spotlight, the more hype they get and the more they get out of it (EDSBS' old "ass and titties" payment plan, presumably), so it's in their best interest in many cases to lie.

When one side has motive to lie and the other side is prohibited from talking, you've got the perfect recipe for completely worthless coverage.

And that doesn't even get into the "ratings" systems which put Mike D'Andrea, Derek Morris and Justin Zwick as the three best Big Ten recruits in 2002 (ahead of Maurice Clarett and Gabe Watson), and A.J. Hawk nowhere in the top-20 Big Ten recruits that year.