Let me ask you a question. Let's say you were a mega-college football recruit, and you received in the mail a personalized, totally ridiculous comic book of yourself from a school.

Would you go to that school? Or would you instantly throw the comic book out because you hadn't read one since you were seven?

Well, regardless of what you'd do, this scenario is exactly what Oregon did do in 2005 to try and snag top high school football recruits. I guess it worked on some level, because it did bag them Jonathan Stewart.

Anyway, Oregon coaches enlisted ordered students to design custom comic books for the Ducks' top 20 recruiting targets. Each comic portrayed the recruit as a hero who leads the Ducks to a national title. Oregon sent each prospect one page per week during the recruiting period.

If you think this is as weird as it sounds, you'd be totally right.

Anyway, here's a sample of what these comic books looked like.


You can see the complete comic book at Sports Illustrated.

As much as I like college football, it actually pains me to know that there were students that produced these things. They better have gotten paid, or gotten free tickets for life, or something. Because that's a hell of a lot of work to do for an audience of one person.

By the way, these comic books I think go a long way in proving what I think has always true: that college football fans are the closest thing we have to soccer fans in this country.

Both are absolutely crazy, take everything way too seriously, seemingly can't live without their sport, and are constantly getting into fights where they throw drums at police. Wait, that last one is just soccer fans.

Anyway, I'm not singling Oregon out, because a lot of schools do much stranger and more ridiculous stuff than this. I've heard in the SEC that they make a lifesize bronze idol of you if you're a top recruit. Well, either that or they dump a briefcase of money in your lap.