National Signing Day is Wednesday and by Thursday morning college football coaches will be able to stand upright again. They have been made to crawl for two months by teenagers fast enough to run down rabbits and strong enough to lift a VW by the back bumper.

Actually, the coaches have been made to do worse than crawl. They have had to spend more money to re-recruit a kid who announced one day for U, but two days later declares for State.

The word the coach hates most is the word you will not find in the dictionary or on your spell check.

De-commit.

The top-rated high school quarterback in the country, Ryan Perrilloux, committed to Texas.

A year later, Perrilloux was visiting Mississippi State, entertaining Florida State coach Bobby Bowden in his home, and giving second thoughts to LSU. He found out others loved him, too.

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Perrilloux is wavering on Texas and eyeing the Tigers.

He is not alone. Demetrice Morley of Miami, who recruiting analyst Tom Lemming rates the best high school cover cornerback, committed to Florida, then abruptly announced for Tennessee. This was before the coaching change at Florida.

Derek Shaw, a quarterback from Oceanside, Calif., committed to Miami, but is now headed off to Arizona State.

Now we can understand the recruiting bills. A kid wavers and it sends the assistant coach back to the airport to re-coddle the recruit.

Oregon, as reported in the Oregonian newspaper, spent as much as $600,000 on recruiting. Its athletic director won’t apologize for the largesse, saying it’s his money and he will do with it what he pleases. The University of Georgia, even with fertile recruiting ground all around it, spends almost $500,000 on football recruiting.

The plane rides, the lodging, the dinner bill for the mom and dad and player, it all adds up. Schools in the BCS conferences are spending a half-million dollars on recruiting.

And we’re not even sure the kids they are recruiting can write a one-page essay.

Don’t feel sorry for the schools. The scholarships they offer are good for one year and if a kid doesn’t measure up, the school can run him off. The schools say the practice is not routine; others disagree.

Lemming has seen enough of the recruiting prostitution to know the proposed NCAA rules limiting recruiting excesses are not enough.

The NCAA is cutting out the limousine rides for the player and his posse. There will be no more extravagant dinners or charter flights. The recruit will not be able to run out on the field with a team or have his highlights shown on a video board during college games as schools show him the love.

Willie Williams of Miami, a high school All-American linebacker in 2003, wrote a diary about eating lobster tails and taking private jet trips for his visits. The University of Colorado was investigated after complaints the football office set up recruits with women.

The party may be over, but Lemming said the rules need to tighten up even more. He said the next step is to tell schools they cannot make an offer to a high school player until Sept. 1 of their senior season.

“Players need to be better educated about schools,” Lemming said. “A lot of times they might commit right after attending a school’s summer camp their junior year. Then they get bullied into living up to the commitment.”

Many times the local Division I school will be on to a terrific player early in the sophomore or junior year before the player is on the national radar. The local school will swoop in with an offer, but with conditions to get the player to commit and end the process.

Lemming said some schools will tell the player he has the scholarship even if he is injured, but if you get injured before you accept, we’ll take it back.

“The player is scared into committing,” Lemming said.

It goes on and on. Schools will say they are running out of scholarships or running out of scholarships for that position, but if you look at the commitment lists for schools most had scholarships available just two days before the signing date.

Oh, but the kids get even. They are kids and they waffle.

At least the word de-commit will disappear Wednesday. Once a kid signs the letter of intent, other schools are barred from recruiting him. It is a binding document and a player must attend that school for a year. If he decides in June he doesn’t want to go to that school, too bad, it’s too late. He can’t play at another school for at least a year as a penalty unless he is released from the scholarship.

The rules should be even tougher. Tell kids to wait. It will be easier on them and coaches won’t have to crawl as much.

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