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Admit it, you're excited.
Tomorrow, a slew of recruits will sign their name to a commitment letter to play for the Syracuse Orange. SU's coaching staff will flood your Twitterfeed with hashtags and Drake GIFs. Orange fans will talk themselves into the many ways each of these players will be four-year All-American Heisman Trophy Winning National Champions. We'll all be convinced that we're beating Clemson this year by 1:00 p.m.
And this is the part where I remind you that what happens Wednesday is essentially meaningless. At least for now.
I mean, yes, it's great that these athletes have entrusted the Syracuse football program to make them better football players and turn them into men. And some of them will probably end up doing great things at Syracuse.
Most of them? I don't think anyone can guarantee that. About the only thing we can guarantee is that not all of them will actually make it to Syracuse for day one of practice. A couple more won't make it to sophomore year. As we found out from our very-unscientific research, you can expect 25-40 percent of them to be gone by the time junior year arrives.
This isn't meant to downgrade their talents or the talents of the SU coaching staff. It's just facts that need to be faced.
Hell, you should already know this lesson just from everything that went down with Robert Washington already. The kid went from being Syracuse Football's savior to "We Never Wanted Him In The First Place" in a matter of months. He heads into NSD undecided and possibly staring down a JUCO start to his career.
Syracuse.com profiled the Class of 2012 on Monday, highlighting that of the 22 players included, ten were gone before senior year.
Syracuse's recruiting classes are littered with talented guys who never panned out for one reason or another. Lavar Lobdell. Rodale Tucker. Ashton Broyld. Corey Cooper. Alin Edouard. Marquise Blair.
What's the point? I suppose the point is to enjoy National Signing Day and the excitement it generates, but don't get caught up in the hype. Dino Babers seems to know what he wants and is very good at getting it (so far), so all you can do is trust in him and his staff and hope SU gets more breaks than it doesn't. Instead of putting mountains of hype onto a certain recruit, try your best to think macro and take everything one player, one practice and one game at a time.