5-8, 189-pound running back Stanley Williams is a four-star recruit from Georgia who just finished his junior year of high school. He just visited Notre Dame and spoke highly of the school. Reportedly.

They say the recruiting business is dicey, at best. Verbal commitments hardly deter other schools from poaching players. Even in the Big Ten, which supposedly preserves a “gentlemen’s agreement” to avoid such encroaching, the line is sometimes crossed.

We’ve talked before about how weird and creepy college athletics recruiting is, these grown men – some of them millionaries many times over – bending over backwards to impress high school kids, and fans rabidly following it every step of the way. After the jump, a story illustrating exactly this.

We’re just one week removed from national signing day for high school prospects, and you know what that means: time to start looking forward to next year’s signing day! Today, to help you do just that, Rivals released its initial list of the top 100 players in the high school class of 2013. As we were looking over this list, though, something jumped out at us even more than these players’ talents: their names. 10 doozies after the jump.

If you or anyone you know is a big college football fan, chances are good that you or someone you know is freaking the hell out right now, and will be for the majority of today. Why? Well, it’s national signing day for college football. After the jump, a primer on signing day for the uninitiated.

The Oregon Ducks paid Houston-based trainer Will Lyles $25,000 for “recruiting services.” But (surprise!) he may have provided them something else instead.

Star Ohio high school football player Kyle Dodson won’t be attending Ohio State, but there’s something he wants you to know.

Rivals.com lists Central Gwinnett (Ga.) High defensive end Francis Kallon as having 13 scholarship offers from BCS programs – which would be impressive even if he ever had played a single game of football.

There are 120 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision programs, and each year, all of those schools sign incoming recruiting classes, generally of at least 20 players. There are bound to be some amazing names in that bunch.

As if signing day weren’t an absurd enough spectacle, many teams have gotten to placing a live webcam by the fax machine through which they receive prospects’ official letters of intent. And count on Alabama to take a college football spectacle to its logical extreme.