College Football Recruiting: Big Weekend as Spring Games Take Place All over

Florida just made some waves by playing their Orange and Blue debut, as folks got to see how the quarterbacks were progressing under new offensive coordinator Brent Pease.

Meanwhile, off the field, the Gators were busy putting in work as well. Will Muschamp's group secured four commitments on the day of, or the week after, their spring event. Although the Gators didn't truly hammer down the starting spot, they did have a successful day as they added to their 2013 class.

In today's climate where recruiting rankings matter to fans and administrators and the pressure is on coaches to win more and more each year, getting the new talent has increased in importance. Evaluate the kids quicker, get the kids to visit, get the kids buy into what you're selling, get them to commit and then hope they stay in the boat come February. Outside of actually winning ball games, that's the most important part of college football today.

So as we stand just a couple days from Saturday, we are on the precipice of one of the biggest weekends on the college football recruiting calendar for 2013. Junior Days have already come and gone. Summer camps are still a few months out on the horizon. We still have to wait for fall to get the big game-day visits. In January, that final push of official visit weekends comes.

Each of those areas has their own importance; right now, we're in the most critical point in the spring when it comes to recruiting.

There are some 43 spring games taking place this Saturday across the country. Teams from the SEC and the Big Ten to the WAC and Sun Belt are staging their big spring showcase on this second weekend in April to get kids on campus. The big boys like Alabama, Georgia, Florida State, Southern Cal and Michigan are all rolling out the red carpet to impress the gems of recruiting targets they are welcoming to campus.

While game-day visits are great for atmosphere and official visits are great for meeting the future teammates, spring game visits are phenomenal for exposing recruits to what they will actually be experiencing on a more day-to-day basis. The recruits get to be down close to the action. They get to see their position coaches working with his players. They get to see the warmups up close. They get to see the in-game decisions and the excitement from the players as they go out and hit each other in front of a crowd.

As for that crowd, that plays a nice little role too. Players are going to get to see just how important football is a school. Do they pack the house like Alabama, or is it largely a friends-and-family affair like at North Carolina? You get to see just how in this spring ball thing fans are.

The rise of the spring game as a recruiting tool has been somewhat meteoric, much like a rise of the Junior Day in recent years. Fans go to these games now; they love them as an appetizer for what is to come in the fall. Recruits use these games as a chance to get closer to the action than they ever could on game-day. The spring game is the happy medium between the campus/facilities tour and sit-down info session that is the Junior Day and the revved-up, focused atmosphere that comes with the game-day visit.