College Football Recruiting Has Become A Complete Clown Show

Recruiting: The lifeblood of college football programs.

Since the sport's inception, elite college teams have been doing everything in their power - both legally and otherwise - to try and secure the services of some of the best high school prospects our great country has to offer.

It seems like in the past few years, however, the recruiting arms race has been amped up to absurd levels.

It used to be that a nice steak dinner on a recruiting trip along with the keys to a Camaro was enough to get players to sign on the dotted line, but things have changed since those halcyon days.

Leaving out the absurd amounts of money it takes to get a big-time recruit to join your class, the sheer amount of smoke being blown up these players' asses on your run-of-the-mill recruiting visit will leave your jaw on the floor.

Take, for example, a video from this past weekend featuring 5-star wide receiver Tristan Keys on his official visit to Knoxville.

Mind you, this kid is currently "committed" to LSU, but he sure looks like he's enjoying his time in Tennessee, and who could blame him?

The UT staffers are treating Keys like a rock star, complete with an "orange carpet" photoshoot in front of what looks like 50 or so people all cheering him on for… walking in a straight line?

For crying out loud, Oregon coach Dan Lanning jumped into a pool to secure the commitment of a 5-star edge rusher, just for the kid to decommit less than three weeks later.

Eat your heart out, Ron Burgundy!

Find me a bigger group of narcissists than top-flight high school recruits, and I'll call you a liar.

But you know what? It's our fault.

We treat these 17-year-old kids like demigods when they haven't even touched the practice field yet, pay them sums of money most middle-class Americans won't see in their lifetime, and then get pissed when they aren't the humble, hard-working players we envision them to be.

I'm guilty of it, too.

Anytime Florida signs a top-100 player out of high school, I get as jacked up as I do for a big third-down conversion against LSU, because that's how crazy recruiting has gotten now.

This "red carpet welcome" isn't something unique to Tennessee either.

Just last weekend, USC gave a similar treatment to its list of visitors too.

Can we wait until this guy catches a touchdown against UCLA before we deify him, please?

This kind of insane treatment is how you end up with hysterical recruiting graphics like this one.

I'm sorry, what?!

I think Mr. Williams here might want to thumb through a copy of his Merriam-Webster's dictionary and see what the meaning of the word "commitment" is before he moves on to his sixth school.

He hasn't even played his senior season of high school ball yet, but he's already committed to practically 1/5 of the entire ACC.

By the way, Williams was on campus in Gainesville officially visiting the Gators this past weekend, less than six weeks after flipping his pledge from Florida to Ole Miss.

This behavior will persist, and, in some cases, trickle down to lower-rated recruits as more money gets pumped into both recruiting and the 24/7/365 coverage of it.

With the start of the season still more than two months away, Lord only knows the college football news cycle will be dominated by teenagers taking pictures in boosters' Lambos and recording rap videos on their official visits.

Now, if you'll excuse me, my team just got a prediction to land a 5-star defensive end, so I need to fire off some tweets from my burner.

Happy recruiting season, everyone!