Recruiting changes needed<br/><span class='hl2'>Move signing day to November to end the charade</span>

Another football recruiting season has come and gone. Here are some things I'd like to see change:

•The end of what Pat Jones calls the hat dance. The ceremony in which recruits turn their school choice into a carnival, usually by placing several caps on a table and feigning interest in each before selecting one.

Muskogee's Stacy McGee and Jameel Owens announced together, with McGee picking up an OU cap and placing it on his head, leaving Owens to pick up an OSU cap, only to pull an OU cap from inside the Cowboy cap.

"Some of these kids, you want to slap 'em once they sign,” Barry Switzer said on Jones' radio show Wednesday.

It all gets silly, which made Guthrie's Kye Staley a throwback Wednesday when he simply walked into his ceremony wearing an OSU cap.

"I wouldn't say it bothers me,” Bob Stoops said of theatrics at recruiting announcements. "It's not my kid, not my young man. But you kind of set yourself up in those situations.”

•A solitary February signing date. College football needs to go to the same signing dates as the rest of the NCAA: November and April.

Stoops prefers a mid-December signing date, presumably to not conflict with games.

But a November date would result in most players signing then and the rash of coaching changes — firings and hirings — that transpire between the regular season and the bowls. It also would cut down on the babysitting time for recruits who have their minds made up.

"Some guys have been sure for a year,” Stoops said.

•End all efforts to return text-messaging to the recruiting process. Texting overwhelms recruits financially and overwhelms both recruits and coaches time-wise.

"You need that time away from each other,” said OU assistant coach Chris Wilson.