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Let's gather 'round the fax machine and remember when the February signing day was the greatest day

Andy Staples head shotby: Andy Staples02/04/26AndyStaples

Those who’ve read this space frequently through the years know I typically roll with the changes in college football, because in the sport and in life, the only real constant is change. But please allow this old man to yell at the clouds for a moment.

It’s the first Wednesday in February, and this day should be more special than it currently feels. We should be waking before dawn. We should be feverishly refreshing Rivals.com. We should have our heads on swivels just in case any Fong Bombs land. We should be watching a live feed of a fax machine the way our teenage children now watch the streams of other people playing video games.

It’s still National Signing Day in name, just not in spirit. Football players planning to enroll for the 2026-27 academic year are allowed to sign with schools beginning at 7 a.m. in their local time zones. Of course, most of the players from the class of 2026 signed in December. Only a few stragglers will sign today, and unless their parents are incredibly nostalgic college football sickos, it’s highly unlikely any of them will use a fax machine.

It feels like yesterday, but it was 13 years ago when I sat in the war room at Ole Miss at 5:44 a.m. central time and watched then-Rebels coach Hugh Freeze ask defensive line coach Chris Kiffin when the staff could expect to receive a signed National Letter of Intent from Lake City, Fla., offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil.

“Sixteen minutes,” Kiffin replied. 

Tunsil’s next change of levels in football would feature a pirated video, a gas mask and an expensive, nerve-wracking slide. This one involved some whirring and beeping and a machine spitting out a few sheets of paper. 

A few seconds after the clock flipped to 6 a.m. central time, Kiffin burst into the war room clutching those papers. He dropped them triumphantly on the table, and everyone cheered. Later, when Tunsil announced his choice on ESPN, the Ole Miss staff would pretend to learn the good news for the benefit of another ESPN camera.

That’s the sort of theater we used to get when National Signing Day really mattered…

  • We got Isaiah Crowell committing to Georgia with the puppy version of Uga. 
  • We got Miami linebacker Willie Williams chronicling official visits to Florida State, Auburn and Miami in the pages of the Miami Herald. Sample paragraph (from the Florida State visit): “I ordered a steak and a lobster tail. The lobster tail was like $49.99. I couldn’t believe something so little could cost so much. The steak didn’t even have a price. The menu said something about market value. I was kind of embarrassed so I didn’t order a lot. But then I saw what the other guys were ordering, I was like, ‘Forget this.’ I called the waiter back and told him to bring me four lobster tails, two steaks and a Shrimp Scampi.” The story about Williams’ trip to Florida the weekend before NSD never got written because Williams was accused of crimes in three separate incidents in three different locations. With charges pending, Williams signed with Miami that Wednesday. Years later, Channing Crowder — an excellent linebacker but a truly legendary podcaster and radio host — filled in the gaps when he told the tale of hosting Williams on that Florida visit.
  • We got Landon Collins signing with Alabama even though his mother had accused then-Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban of offering Collins’ girlfriend a job. Mother April Justin, who wanted Collins to go to home-state LSU, also shot her son this look when he announced his intent to play for Alabama at the Under Armour All-America game the previous December.

Some weird stuff still happens in when players sign in December, but we barely notice because the College Football Playoff is about to start and the transfer portal is about to open. Plus, “We got the DocuSign” just doesn’t hit as hard as “The fax is in.”

In this new world, the DocuSign that really matters is the signed revenue share agreement — which might include a hefty buyout to discourage any poaching. The papers that used to be faxed really don’t matter much anymore.

Coaches still want to allow players to sign before the new year while administrators would prefer to return to the single signing day in February. But that probably wouldn’t matter much either. So many freshmen enroll in January now that a hefty chunk of the signing class would sign the financial aid agreement, sign the revenue share agreement and be three weeks into the offseason weight program before NSD rolls around.

And that’s OK. The world moves on. The things we loved at the turn of the century become the things that cause our kids to roll their eyes when we wax nostalgic.

Dad, tell us again about the time Floyd Raven’s mom forged his NLI and faxed it to Ole Miss when he wanted to go to Texas A&M.

I know I’m among friends here. You might have an On3 membership specifically because you remember every single one of these stories. So I say this with complete sincerity.

If a fax machine still exists in some football building, can someone just point a camera at it and turn on the live stream? I’d probably watch for at least a few minutes.