Forget Super Tuesday, yesterday was Wacky Wednesday, the day that the top tier college football program have their recruits for the incoming year sign letters of intent to play football in exchange for a free university education. At least that’s the theory.

The pundits are widely hailing Alabama, Notre Dame, and Miami of Florida are considered to be the top-3 classes this year with the schools accepting letters of intent from 33, 23, and 33 recruits respectively. The thing to know about this is: no school can have over 85 players on scholarship at anytime and no school can place more than 25 players in a single year. Another significant thing to understand is that these ratings are projections on how the athletes will perform, about half of the highly ranked recruits don’t reach their projected potential. Finally, these are 17 and 18 year old kids, most of them don’t have their heads screwed on straight and will do wacky things as a result.

The net of all this information? These rankings and all the hoopla about rankings don’t mean squat. It’s a publicity stunt to garner attention and traffic to the media outlets that cover the game plain and simple. Don’t believe me? How does a team like Wisconsin pull in top-30 ranked classes each year and routinely win 10 games a year? The answer is simple, they recruit athletes that fit into their system and culture, and they do a great job of developing the players. I’m continually puzzled by the fascination with recruiting, more important is player development and the “fit” into the philosophy and system.

That being said, there are two unusual recruiting stories this year. A player in Nevada was allegedly offered scholarships to several DI schools and had a selection “ceremony” at his high school. After the publicity that came from it, the schools said “now, who are you?” I’ve heard multiple accounts about this, either the student staged the whole bizarre event or was scammed by someone posing as officials from a school or schools, either way, it’s out of the ordinary.

The other involves top quarterback recruit Terrelle Pryor – highly coveted as a Vince Young-like player. He was all set to announce complete with ESPN coverage and decided not to decide at the last minute. This has caused huge consternation in the fan bases of schools he was considering. My belief is he’s trying to find the right fit, he wants to be sure, and he’s taking advice from sources of information he trusts. But I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he did something like committed to a non-named school to play basketball (he’s also a star basketball player.) Let’s give the kid some space people! Let him have some peace to make his choice. Can you imagine being 17 years old and having reporters call and text you incessantly wanting to know if you made your mind up yet?

Finally, welcome to the Buckeye Class of 2008. There are 19 members and you can get all the details at Bucknuts. It’s a great class that fills many needs, particularly on the defensive and offensive lines. I look forward to seeing you play on Saturdays over the next few years.

The Oil Drum did a great analysis of the economics of ethanol derived from corn as the feedstock yesterday. Read the article, it’s very well done. I’ll steal the punch line, on average at present ethanol prices (production and sale) there is a 7% margin on the product. That’s right, 7%. It’s awfully tough to make a living on 7% unless you’re moving massive volumes.

Does this mean ethanol is dead? No, not at all for a few reasons. First, the prices for ethanol sale move as do the corn feedstock prices. At $5/bushel of corn, that means the feedstock price for ethanol is $1.30/gallon (net of the $0.55/gal recovery from the resale of distillation byproducts.) In a certain sense, corn ethanol’s challenges today are a direct result of its early success – the more demand there is for the feedstock, the higher the price goes, corn has doubled in price the past couple of years.

Second, even with the current tough economics, the money spent in the production and consumption of ethanol is staying in the US vs. being shipped to OPEC countries, this is a net positive and it seems likely that government regulations will favor domestic ethanol production in upcoming energy policy decisions.

Finally, technology associated with alternate feedstocks, (i.e., cellulosic ethanol) is advancing at a pretty fast clip. When the science is able to be applied at scale against a feedstock like switchgrass where there is no competing food demand, the feedstock price should go down dramatically and perform more predictably (although there will be a premium paid in higher capital costs to build these plants it appears.)

It’s clear given the situation in Brazil that ethanol economics can work at scale, but the right approach must be employed. The biofuel market may be in a trough, but it’s likely a temporary situation.

Earlier this week, Calpine emerged from bankruptcy protection after a prolonged struggle that saw multiple delays. The issue is now trading on the NYSE under symbol CPN-WI. The new issue will have 423 million shares outstanding meaning the market capitalization of the company at today’s values is nearly $7B. We’ve been a bit skeptical that Calpine could emerge, but have been proved wrong as they are now back in business and moving forward.

Let’s hope that the generator can stay in business and invests in the geothermal portion of its portfolio, after all, there are no ongoing fuel costs!

These were all the rage in 2005/6 and we really haven’t seen them emerge. The promise of such technology is amazing, but alas, there hasn’t been much follow through in terms of real market applications. There were also printable displays with electronic ink that seemed to be emerging, but somehow stalled. In any case, watch the video above, it’s certainly interesting.

After our endorsement of McCain and Obama yesterday, both candidates went on to enjoy significant success during the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses. You heard it here first, those two candidates will be squaring off in November for the top prize. McCain will be uncomfortable with running mate Mike Huckabee and John Edwards will round out the ticket for the Democrats.

So candidates, don’t overlook Musings from the Coast, it’s clear our readers hold great sway in the elections!

(This is totally tongue in cheek in case the humor font is not working…)