You can plan all you want down to the smallest detail but if Mother Nature decides it's a no-go, then it's a no-go.
Just ask anyone who's lingered for hours in an airport after their flight has been canceled.
We witnessed major disruptions last week because of snow and ice that resulted in a slew of school closings and basketball games that were postponed. School was closed in Fayetteville last Wednesday but that didn't prevent Brooks Yurachek (Wake Forest), Kaylon Morris (Arkansas), and Deuce Cooper (Arkansas Pine-Bluff) from signing with Division I teams.
I showed my age when I asked Cooper where he was able to find a fax machine with school closed and he said, "Naw, man, I did this on my phone."
Until recently, fax machines were needed to complete the process, at least since the early 1980s.
Snow and ice covered much of Northwest Arkansas on national signing day in 2014 when four or five recruits huddled near a fax machine in an office at Springdale Har-Ber, where Josh Frazier (Alabama) and others took turns faxing in their letters of intent. I remember that day in particular because when I got back to my car it wouldn't start, and I had to go back inside and ask for help.
Luckily for me, someone had booster cables and I was able to drive away.
There was a time when coaches, at least the assistants, were allowed to be in the building where the recruits were scheduled to sign. In Blytheville one year, I watched coaches from different schools take turns cornering up a recruit while trying to get the last word in. That was an uncomfortable situation the NCAA eventually stopped by preventing coaches from attending signing sessions.
I was still at Blytheville in the mid-1980s and driving back to the office when I heard on the radio the Razorbacks had just signed a top-notch basketball player from Mississippi County Community College. That was news to me, especially considering I covered the team and knew the best player by far was Joe Harvell, who became a freshman All-American at Ole Miss and led the SEC in scoring as a junior, topping even Shaquille O'Neal from LSU.
Lesson learned: Be wary of the hype for the home team, especially on national signing day.
I was about to take a picture of a signing in Pine Bluff when, at the last second, the player motioned for other members of his family to gather around. I had to get names from about seven or eight more people, two or three of which had different last names than the recruit.
Lesson learned, Part 2: As a reporter never assume anything, including variants to the spelling of my own middle name, Lynn, which I learned that day can also be spelled Lin.
I've covered signing ceremonies in large high school arenas with tables set up for a dozen athletes and ceremonies in small, cracker box gyms with one signee. In 1995, I stood with two or three others and watched Corey Carr sign a letter of intent at Kingsland, a small high school in south Arkansas that no longer exists.
Lesson learned, Part 3: Never assume an athlete who played at the smallest classification in Arkansas won't amount to much in college. Carr signed with Texas Tech, where he became a third-team All-American and twice led the Big 12 in scoring. Nearly three decades after leaving Kingsland, Carr is still No. 6 on the Red Raiders' all-time scoring list with 1,904 points.
Oh, and he was a second-round pick who played briefly in the NBA before moving overseas to finish his career.
There's no doubt the excitement and suspense of the traditional signing period in February has been surpassed by the early signing period that was added a few years ago. That was obvious last Wednesday when Arkansas added only one scholarship player, Shamar Easter of Ashdown, to the long list the Razorbacks snagged in December.
Still, it's a shame the signing ceremonies scheduled mostly for football players last week were adversely affected by ice and snow. So, if I may be so bold as to make one request of Mother Nature for the first Wednesday in February, 2024, it would be this:
A little sunshine, please?