Tom Dienhart, BTN.com Senior Writer, February 3, 2016

It?s National Signing Day! And, it looks like it?s gonna be a big day for Ohio State and Michigan. That?s bad news for the rest of the Big Ten-especially East Division rivals of the Buckeyes and Wolverines.

"If you're Indiana, Maryland or Rutgers, you have to convince yourself to have hope," said Mike Farrell, the national recruiting director for Rivals.com. "Penn State is fourth in the division, and the gap between Penn State and the rest is massive."

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Here is why the 2016 Class is so important to Jim Harbaugh.

Harbaugh didn?t get a full recruiting cycle to ink his first class. For this one, he did.

"I think this class certainly creates the foundation for him at Michigan," Scout.com's Midwest football recruiting manager Allen Trieu said this week. "This is the first one that really sets the tone. These are going to be the guys who are going to be the face of Jim Harbaugh's Michigan over the next few years.

"This group of kids is really going to be the foundation for them moving forward."

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How is this for moving into the modern times? Recruits no longer have to just fax letters-of-intent. There is an app for that.

"It's the only day of the year a fax gets used," Michael Bertsch, Notre Dame's media relations director for football told the Chicago Tribune. "I've never understood why the fax. We finally thought, 'This is kind of ridiculous.' "

Recruits will be able to send in their letters from their mobile devices using an app called CudaSign. The letters are downloaded into the device, and the recruits can sign them electronically with their finger or a pen on their device's screen. The letters are then emailed to Notre Dame.

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Ohio State?s biggest signee today will be defensive end Nick Bosa, the younger brother of you-know-who. But he is coming off knee surgery. Will he be ready for fall camp?

"It'll be close," Bosa's father told cleveland.com on Monday. "He's doing fantastic. Part of it is having the best surgeon in the world, part of it is great genes and part of it is his sick work ethic.
"He hasn't missed a day a day with the physical therapist three times a week, and he works the upper body three times a week. So he's doing great."

Rated the No. 1 strongside defensive end in the country in the 247Sports composite rankings, Bosa tore his ACL in November. Shortly after, he had surgery to repair it by famed Dr. James Andrews.

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Tom Shatel of Omaha.com thinks over signing isn?t a good thing. But, the idea of a ?commitment? is a fallacy, too.

Shatel says former NU coach Bo Pelini had a terrific idea a few years ago: Eliminate signing day. Allow recruits to sign with schools as soon as the offers come. A novel idea that I love. The signing period should begin the first day of school in a recruit?s senior year, or the last day of his junior year, whatever. From that point until the following spring, recruits sign as soon as they accept an offer. No changing. No backing out by either party.

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There is work to be done in the Illinois athletic department. And Bob Asmussen of the Champaign News-Gazette has a to-do list for the new A.D.

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Yes, it?s an ad. But check out Draymond Green and Kevin Hart in this new Foot Locker commercial.

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Meet new Wisconsin defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox, who has massive shoes to fill taking over for Dave Aranda.

Head coach Paul Chryst and Wilcox noted UW's defense will be similar to Aranda's in the ability to play multiple fronts. The type of fronts UW uses will be determined by how players develop in the off-season and how well the staff replaces three starters in the secondary and linebacker Joe Schobert.

"Had there been no changes in the coaching staff," Chryst told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, "our team is going to change and therefore the look is going to change.
"How is it going to look? We really don't know."

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With his career drawing to a close, Michigan State?s Denzel Valentine is speaking up. And, it?s a good thing.

The reasons for the increased vocal-ness, Valentine said, were numerous. For one, he was frustrated by a performance he saw as below the team's capabilities. Rutgers was able to blow by some defenders and catch the Spartans out of position other times.

"It was like 'Come on, man,'" Valentine said. "We know what we were capable of, defensively. It was really frustrating. We were getting backdoored, people were driving around us."

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I know the bowls have been over for a while. But this is a neat piece from Dan Duggan of NJ.com that ranks the bowls by attendance.

Some drew less than 20,000 fans. But, these games aren?t about attendance. They are about filling a time slot on a TV schedule.

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The Washington Post has ranked all 106 players in Super Bowl 50. See where the Big Ten fellas land.