The excitement and hype that have grown up around college football recruiting nearly killed Tom Lemming the other day.

Lemming is one of those recruiting experts whose every word the most-rabid fans devour at this time of year. He was driving through upstate New York to visit a high school prospect when a blizzard trapped him on a rural stretch of road.

“I was there 12 hours,” he said. “I didn’t even have a hat or gloves. I’m thinking this is the end of me.”

During the football signing period, which started again Wednesday, the annual recruiting wars can seem as grim as life or death. Fans want to know how many five-star players their team wooed, where their alma mater ranks among the top incoming classes.

Lemming, editor of Prep Football Report and an analyst for CSTV, offers this advice.

“It’s a good indicator but don’t take it as gospel,” he said. “Take it as fun.”

The hunger for recruiting news and analysis has spawned a cottage industry of Internet sites and publications in the last 20 years. As UCLA Coach Karl Dorrell says, “It’s a lot different now than it has ever been. There are so many services out there.”

Yet for all the attention devoted to the subject, predicting a team’s future by way of its incoming freshmen can be tricky.

Consider the Top 10 classes on two major sites – Scout.com and Rivals.com -over the last five years.

The lists were populated by programs that have enjoyed tremendous success on the field, teams such as Florida, USC, Texas and Louisiana State.

high school seniors all over the country signed letters of intent Wednesday, including Auburn-bound Michael McNeil, center, out of Davidson (Ala.) High. The next step is to see how they all pan out.

But the difference between a Top 10 class and a Top 10 finish in the polls can be one close loss, one key injury over the course of a season.

Oklahoma signed highly ranked classes in each of the last three years only to struggle with injuries to tailback Adrian Peterson and the loss of starting quarterback Rhett Bomar, dismissed from the team last summer after allegations that he received improper benefits.

Florida State has failed to compete for a national championship despite a similar string of recruiting victories.

Allen Wallace, the national recruiting editor at Scout.com and publisher of SuperPrep magazine, says there might be a better indicator.

“Fans should focus on coaching, because it’s really more important than the recruiting classes,” he said. “You see coaches go into situations where they markedly change a team without changing the talent.”