The period between the end of spring practice to the first day of camp can be a long and sometimes boring time period for college football fans. Lately though many fans have turned to a second passion to fill their college football needs, recruiting. Recruiting is a year round process for college coaches but now it is also that way for fans.

Rivals.com and Scout.com are only two of the many recruiting services that fans can sign up for to follow their team or any team through out the year. There they find out which kids like their favorite schools and how their recruiting class ranks each year come LOI day. Some fans become so interested in how many “stars” a certain player is, and when their team get a verbal commitment from someone with only 2 or 3 stars they become disappointed.

The fans need to understand that these services are a business and their evaluations are not the end all. Some services will even demote players that verbal too early so that they can bump others up that has not made their college intentions clear. In the recruiting business, uncertainty sells. That is all well and good but when you have the recruiting guru’s telling kids where to go to school, that is where the problems can occur.

When anyone mentions the name, Tom Lemming, most people around the recruiting world know who he is. He used to run ESPN.com’s recruiting page and now is the head-recruiting guru for CSTV. His actions have opened a few eyes and none more evident than last year with one of the top players in the country Myron Rolle.

Rolle accused Lemming of pushing him to sign with Notre Dame. Rolle went even so far as to say, “Tom Lemming is a huge Notre Dame guy. He kept saying to me, ‘You know they have a great coaching staff. You know Charlie Weis is Mr. NFL. You’re an academic guy. That place is for you.’ Then he killed Florida State. He said, ‘You’re stupid if you go there.’ Um, OK. Thanks.”

This is not the first time Lemming expressed his interest with Notre Dame. In 2002 he swayed ESPN to have Lorenzo “Hollywood” Booker to announce his intentions live on LOI day. At the time Booker was the #1 recruit in the country and all signs pointed to him landing with the Irish. Well that was not the case as Booker chose Florida State over the Irish. The look of pain and anger on the face of Lemming was so clear. He was so upset that he barely could talk after the announcement.

I want to set the record straight; I do not think Notre Dame likes that Lemming pushes kids to go to school there. Some recruits seem to be turned off when Lemming does this so it is not a good recruiting tool for the Irish. But the Notre Dame and the NCAA needs to start keeping a good eye on these so call recruiting experts such as Lemming. The kids have a hard enough decision on their own and do not need lemmings trying to push their agenda.