Where is my Signing Day news conference?

I'm a small town newspaperman. Personal scrapbooker is in my job description.
Not all of us can work at the New York Times, nor do we want to. If you think that makes me less of a man, or less of a reporter, then with all due respect you can go fuck yourself with a rusty chainsaw.

Plus, like Albert and others have said, JUCO sports in Mississippi and a few other places are legit. Mississippi, IIRC, has had the last three or four JUCO national champions in football, and has several nationally-prominent basketball and baseball programs as well. There are JUCO teams in Mississippi that could probably beat some Division I teams, because they have so much Division I talent. Powerhouse FBS teams have also been known to stash players there to get their grades in order, and then bring them in a year or two later.
In a lot of cases, I've dealt with players who view going to a Mississippi JUCO as preferable to an FCS or D-II offer. If they go there and play well for one or two years, they know they'll get noticed and get better four-year offers than they would signing straight out of high school.
As always, it's all about knowing your market. If I worked in Minnesota, I doubt I'd give one flip about junior college football. In Mississippi, you damn well better be on top of it.

 

Thanks for supporting my argument!

As a journalist, have you written enterprise stories on JUCO programs? Get people to comment on their status as unofficial feeder programs? Any wink-wink arrangements between JUCO coaches and FBS coaches? If you're just covering signings and shooting a photo of a kid signing a piece of paper while neglecting to cover the tough stories, you are less of a reporter than those at bigger papers.

 

Yeah, that's my point. There's no sense in talking hard and fast rules that should apply to all papers. The Wichita, Lubbock and Pensacola papers aren't exactly Podunk County weeklies, but they seem to do a fairly significant amount of JUCO coverage, as they should. Syracuse gives ink to small college lacrosse and that makes sense up there.

Trying to make rules about what kind of signings or commitments should be covered can also prove faulty. Just use your best judgement of how interesting or important it is to readers. Maybe a local high school standout deciding to play at a JUCO or D-III is worthy, maybe it isn't. Depends on the circumstances.

 

We're a daily in Ohio with about 9,ooo to 10,000 subscribers.
Our Division I kids get a story, length dependent upon the sport in question and the talent of the kid. Let's be honest, more people care about a kid coming out of high school to play football or basketball than they do for one joining the swim team.
As for Division II or III schools (we have one of each in town), those get put in the briefs — City High's Timmy Goldenboy will continue his football career at Small Town University — with some stats thrown in if there's time to track them down, they're provided or they're well known.
We'll follow up later if the kid does well or plays a key role on a good team.

 

And this is precisely why we only cover D-I kids.

Most times, the kid is "signing" a blank sheet of paper -- though I've had a few who waited until the ceremony to sign and then send in the paperwork.