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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Arkansas State coach Blake Anderson has worked at the junior college, Division I, Division II and Division III levels, but the strangest thing he ever witnessed on a National Signing Day happened during his tenure as an offensive assistant at New Mexico from 1999 to 2001.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A fellow assistant was convinced a defensive back the Lobos had been recruiting was going to fax in his Letter of Intent any minute. It would be a big win for New Mexico, beating out Kentucky and Washington. The assistant had been in contact with the player and kept assuring the rest of the staff it was a done deal.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then the fax machine started whirring.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everybody in the room was high-fiving and the assistant seemed relieved, telling everyone, \u201CI told you!\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the fax printed out, it was a Letter of Intent --&amp;nbsp;to Washington.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CHe had sent us his signed copy to the University of Washington,\u201D Anderson said. \u201CThat\u2019s how he told this particular coach that he wasn\u2019t coming. It was brutal. We all got silent, obviously. He just melted. There\u2019s no worse gut punch than to find out a guy went somewhere else by sending the opposing team\u2019s fax.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Current Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez had his own Letter of Intent scare, but his had a happy ending.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;While at West Virginia, Rodriguez was trying to persuade a Florida high school player to come to Morgantown, but the recruit couldn\u2019t make up his mind. Finally, the end of the signing period came. If he didn\u2019t sign &lt;em&gt;somewhere &lt;/em&gt;by midnight -- West Virginia or otherwise -- he was likely headed to prep school or junior college.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;After being convinced that going to West Virginia made a lot more sense than marching at a military school at the crack of dawn, the kid agreed to sign. The only problem? His Letter of Intent had expired, and he didn\u2019t have a new one.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CWe told him to go to a local Kinko\u2019s that was open,\u201D Rodriguez said. \u201CWe faxed him the new Letter of Intent. He signed it and faxed it back at like 11:15 p.m., 45 minutes before the deadline. He winds up passing the ACT, playing as a true freshman, graduating in three and a half years and having a great career. But he was 45 minutes away from marching up in New York at six in the morning.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 &lt;strong&gt;RIVALS100: Ranking the top 100 recruits from the class of 2015&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;While the end of the fax machine on National Signing Day is coming -- and soon, thanks to the e-signature technology most of us have been using for years -- the NCAA can hardly be considered early adopters, so the fax still gets its annual moment in the sun. Perhaps this is the most amateur thing left in college football, a sport that is anything but at this point. Coaches wake up at 3:00 a.m., pick up an obscene amount of donuts and other pastries and turn on their office lights by four in the morning. Then it\u2019s time to make sure the coffee is strong and get ready to stare at a fax machine for the next few hours.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CIt is a spectacle unlike any other,\u201D ex-UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel said, jokingly.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Neuheisel has the clarity of distance, as he now provides analysis for the Pac-12 Network, which has a two-and-a-half-hour special planned for Wednesday evening. But the former coach has Signing Day stories from stints at UCLA, Washington and Colorado.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On Signing Day 2011, Lakewood (Calif.) High offensive lineman Torian White had his televised ceremony, and the UCLA staff crowded in Neuheisel\u2019s office hoping to watch White put on a Bruins hat. Except when the time came, White didn\u2019t don the UCLA colors. He instead tossed on a USC cap. The other coaches backpedaled out of Neuheisel\u2019s office, expecting him to be upset about the news. Yet before Neuheisel could get angry, the phone rang.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;White\u2019s father had called to ask Neuheisel if there was still room for Torian to sign at UCLA. White was ushered through the halls of the studio on the hunt for a fax machine. \u201CEventually they found some corner office that had one, and he sent in the Letter of Intent,\u201D Neuheisel said. \u201CThe clandestine move through the entire studio to find a fax machine so we could secure the deal was interesting, and I\u2019m whispering, and everybody outside my office still thinks he\u2019s going to USC. All of a sudden our fax machine starts to hum, and there it comes across. They all thought I was some sort of savant or a Houdini.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Signing Day has changed a lot since Jessie Armstead chose Miami in 1989. He made his decision from a hotel in Dallas in what is considered the beginning of the hat-picking tradition.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CThere were like 10 or 15 TV stations there,\u201D former Miami and North Carolina coach and current ESPN analyst Butch Davis said. \u201CEverybody wanted to know. Nobody had any idea. When he started pulling the hats out, everybody was like what is this? He was the first guy to ever do it. He put that damn Miami hat on, and I was blown away. \u2018All right! Jessie Armstead!\u2019\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Also noteworthy: Armstead\u2019s Carter High teammate Derric Evans signed his Letter of Intent from a hot tub.)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anderson calls old recruiting practices \u201CThe Wild Wild West,\u201D and in a lot of ways that\u2019s accurate. Coaches would sleep in their cars outside of a recruit\u2019s house until they were allowed to meet. Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer once famously slept on the couch in Alvin Ross\u2019 house; Switzer unplugged the phone so nobody else could call to make sure he was the one who signed the touted running back.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are stories of players being held for hours at a time in a secure location, almost like a star witness, so that no other schools could get the last word in before they signed. Anderson even remembers loading guys in a van when he was at the juco level so that all the prospects could sign at once.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The advent of the recruiting dead period directly before Signing Day took much of the craziness out of last-minute recruiting, at least from the coaches\u2019 point of view. But things were more interesting when coaches could physically be at the schools when players made their choices. For example, the time Davis went to Pahokee (Fla.) High to sign a kid for Miami in the mid-1980s.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI drive out to the Everglades to Lake Okeechobee,\u201D Davis said. \u201CAnd I\u2019ve got the scholarship papers. I go to the high school. It was one of those eerie feelings. It was almost like the movie &lt;em&gt;Left Behind&lt;/em&gt; when there\u2019s nobody around. There\u2019s nobody in the principal\u2019s office, nobody in the hallway, no custodians. There should be 700 kids, and there\u2019s nothing. There\u2019s something spooky going on. I walk around to the back outside, and all the students and the band are there. They\u2019ve got a big, gigantic circle with an \u2018X.\u2019 They\u2019re all looking up in the sky.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Former Miami coach Howard Schnellenberger had always arrived by helicopter, but Schnellenberger was off to Louisville, and new coach Jimmy Johnson ditched the practice. The whole school was unimpressed to see an assistant in a car holding the papers instead.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;While Davis never experienced any fax machine snafus that he could remember, he still had some surprises, most notably the signing of defensive end Robert Quinn in 2008. The North Carolina staff went to bed on Tuesday night thinking the Tar Heels were out of the running for the future NFL All-Pro, but the next morning there it was: a fax with Quinn\u2019s signature. Davis compared it to finding a present under the tree on Christmas morning.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Signing Day fax tradition leaves room for those sorts of surprises. That is, as long someone on staff remembers to fill the paper tray.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201COne year I was at Middle Tennessee State [as co-offensive coordinator], and we\u2019re all staring at the fax machine looking,\u201D Anderson said. \u201CAnd looking. And looking. Nothing\u2019s coming through. We\u2019re sweating, and we realize there\u2019s absolutely no paper in the fax machine. I was not responsible for the paper, but I was in that room. It took a good while before everybody finally even realized to check, and there was none in it. We put it in, and all of a sudden all the faxes started popping out.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A spectacle unlike any other, indeed.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 &lt;strong&gt;RICKMAN: Ten recruits whose commitments&amp;nbsp;will shape Signing Day&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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