Dan Wetzel college football recruiting podcast

Everyone likes to mock the coverage of college football recruiting as pointless, overhyped and a testament to all that is wrong with modern sports. They may very well be correct.

For all its obvious issues, it's still something fun to follow, even if you don't have a specific team in the hunt.

So this week, the Dan Wetzel Podcast welcomes Mike Farrell, the lead recruiting analyst for Rivals.com. If you like recruiting, this discussion is about as good as it gets.

[Recruiting: Final Rivals100 2012 prospect rankings | Breaking down the moves]

First, there's an appropriate shout out to unapologetic recruiting fan Scott Van Pelt. Then, Mike delivers some old stories of Joe Paterno the recruiter and how Terrelle Pryor delayed his decision out of deference to JoePa, who made the last in-home visit to Pryor's house in Jeannette, Pa.

Other topics in this wide-ranging discussion:

• Why Alabama keeps killing it.

• The impressive success of USC in the face of scholarship limitations and the failure of a number of Pac-12 schools to capitalize on the Trojans' situation thus far.

[Related: USC recruiting thrives despite sanctions]

• The impact of super recruiter Tosh Lupoi leaving a job as an assistant at California to go to Washington.

• Why the SEC hasn't tried to mine California harder and how Notre Dame is making headway there.

• The impact of moving to the SEC for Missouri and Texas A&M; it's notable for one, not so much for the other. Plus, will it somehow impact the University of Texas?

• How the Big 12 clearly has helped push TCU with a number of higher-rated prospects – five four-star commitments thus far.

• The transition Nebraska appears to be making in recruiting now that it is in Big Ten – less Texas, more Midwest. And with Urban Meyer and Brady Hoke working the region, that's a challenge for the Huskers.

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Yahoo! Sports Radio: Listen to the podcast]

• Gunner Kiel's three-school commitment process and whether that's a warning sign or just part of the public nature of a highly rated quarterback's decisions.

• The possibility that Stanford and Rutgers could clean up in the final week.

• Predictions on all of the currently uncommitted top-50 recruits: Dorial Green-Beckham, Eddie Goldman, Stefon Diggs, Darius Hamilton, Tracy Howard, Zach Banner, Nelson Agholor, Kyle Murphy, Aziz Shittu, Josh Harvey-Clemons, Andrus Peat, Joshua Garnett, Thomas Johnson and Devin Fuller.

There are about a million more nuggets scattered throughout, so check it out here or later on iTunes via "Dan Wetzel Yahoo Sports."

And happy National Signing Day.

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