Move over Survivor, the Bachelor(ette), Meet My Folks, and Joe Millionaire. I have come up with the ultimate reality based television show that incorporates the best of all of the above, and more. And the beauty of my idea is that it reoccurs naturally every year, culminating in the first Wednesday in February for football players. Reality television, meet the world of college football recruiting!

It seems to me that with the proliferation of reality television shows and ESPN now televising regular season high school basketball games, this is a natural segue. Think about it: big time college football recruits are followed from September until signing day in February. Their lives become a cross between "The Truman Show" and "Hoop Dreams." Watch live as Coach X tells Recruit 1 "You are the top guy on my board" and then says the same thing to Recruits 3, 8, 11, 19 and 24 later in the program. See how an eighteen year old�s impressions of a school can be colored by family, friends, coaches, academics, the attractiveness of the coeds and how many flavors of self-serve ice cream are in the cafeteria.

As you are reading this, you probably are thinking I am crazy, but how does Survivor cast? Well, people submit videotapes and then network types decide who would make a good fit. How do colleges recruit football players? Other than by word of mouth, college coaches dissect literally hundreds of videotapes to discern which high school student-athletes would make a good fit for their program.

To take the analogy even further, once the player matriculates to the Island (campus), lots of things can vote a player off such as: home sickness, failure to be a team player, or lack of commitment to either academics or athletics. In some programs, being a Heisman candidate even gives you immunity!

Like the Bachelor(ette), competition is keen for the high school superstar. For blue-chippers, they may have 25 or more suitors sending them mail as high school juniors. From that list, most will narrow it down to a more limited number of unofficial visits, then five official visits, all the while the respective coaching staffs are just hoping to get the rose and advance to the next round. At the end, the players may even let their suitors meet the folks for an in-home visit.

At that point, as producer I would incorporate the Meet My Folks lie detector test. Questions like "Are you going to recommend that my son take classes in chair stacking?" and "So, do you really plan to keep my son at quarterback beyond the first day of camp?" would have interesting responses. Depending on which coaches get filmed in-home, I am just going to have to make sure I get a comprehensive insurance policy because I suspect the polygraphist will make a workmen�s comp claim for all the times he has to give the "thumbs down" signal.

Finally, for some of the "big time" programs of the world, I can think of no greater analogy than Joe Millionaire. Big time programs shuttle high school football stars off to the chateaux (stadium) with promises of fame and fortune. Both sides may be playing a game of cat and mouse, but ultimately a lot of high school stars are brought into the competition under false pretenses surrounding position placement, playing time and an NFL future.

Let�s not forget the outside characters involved in Joe Millionaire too. Instead of having Paul the butler as a sounding board, the recruits have recruiting analysts like Tom Lemming giving them the true lay of the land.

We could even have various recruiting board gurus opine on recruits. Woodward and Bernstein had Deep Throat; for the VT segment, we could have Will interview TCB, Scout and others on air with the gurus going incognito. With 007 in his name, one would think TCB would love the mystery.

The Hoo guru segment would be particularly enthralling. We would only need one chair while having eight gurus, each with their own message board name, appear on air at the same time. Well, actually, we would need two chairs � one for the eight gurus and the other for his therapist. And all of them would be accruing valuable years of NFL experience at the same time.

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