SEC in favor of post-Thanksgiving signing day in an early signing period

If an early signing period happens, the SEC wants an early signing period signing day to be after Thanksgiving.

On Wednesday at SEC meetings, the league's coaches voted to recommend a signing day on the first Monday after Thanksgiving. According to SEC commissioner Mike Slive, the league wants to keep the recruiting setup the way it is, but it'll recommend the post-Thanksgiving date if there's support for the measure.

The ACC is set to discuss an early signing period at its meetings in June, however the conference wants an early signing period day on August 1. Obviously, that's more than a three-month gap in opinion and the SEC is saying yes begrudgingly.

Unlike other NCAA sports, football doesn't have an early signing period and National Signing Day is in February.

There's another facet to the SEC's recommendation as well. The proposal from league coaches would make an early signing day open to recruits who have not taken an official visit to any school. In essence, it'd be for players who really, really know which school they want to attend. And also because SEC coaches aren't in favor of overhauling their current recruiting calendars.

“We want to coach our players in season,” Georgia coach Mark Richt told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We don’t want the recruiting calendar to change. We don’t want all of a sudden to have to have official visits in the summer.

“So we feel like if a guy really knows where he wants to go and wants to sign early and get it over with because he loves this one school, then in order to sign early you don’t take any official visits. … You’re targeting guys who probably have known since they were 13 years old where they were going to go, and you don’t make the recruiting process insane, so to speak.”

How will the differences be resolved? Likely with the help of the Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12. Those conferences have yet to make a formal recommendation. When they do, we'll have a better idea what the early signing period landscape will look like.

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Nick Bromberg

is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @NickBromberg