1 week from now, fax machines become relevant again

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"I think a lot of times people get confused and think we mandate it, and that's not the case at all. It's their choice," said Susan Peal, director of the National Letter of Intent (NLI). "I think it's going more and more toward the electronic mode of transmission. I highly encourage it. You always have those old-school people who want to go through regular mail or fax. I don't think it's necessary because we do have a more efficient way to do it."

An informal survey of schools in the SEC, which has some of the most money to spend in college sports, shows the athletics departments are largely still using the fax machine on signing day.

A spokesman for LSU said signing day is essentially the only day the athletics department's fax machine gets used. LSU, Auburn, Alabama, South Carolina, Missouri, Vanderbilt, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Florida responded that they primarily receive NLIs by fax.

Mississippi State said most of its other sports get PDF scans sent to them, but football still uses the fax to have a hard copy right away. Georgia said it has some instances of NLIs scanned and e-mailed. Florida has received NLIs electronically, particularly during the fall signing period, and said it's a preference by recruits. Alabama said it has an option for recruits to use e-mail.

In addition to allowing the NLI to be scanned and sent electronically, the NCAA now permits electronic signatures if it's a replica of a signature.

"It obviously has to be a signature," Peal said. "What it can't be is any acknowledgment where you just type it in and it ends up being the same for anybody. So in electronic form, it could be scanned in, pasted in, or signing it by their mouse. It's either actual signature pen to paper, or it's a replica of the signature."

Eugene Byrd, a Birmingham man who oversaw the NLI program as an SEC associate commissioner in the early 2000s, has been trying for several years to launch an electronic-signature service called Esigningday. Byrd has estimated electronic signatures would save schools $15,000 a year and cut processing time by 80 percent by streamlining the process without paper.

Byrd and the NLI program have gone back and forth for several years on whether universities can use his program, which he's now trying to sell for $8,500 per school. Byrd said his password-protected Esigningday has now met the standards by the NLI program after eliminating a function allowing recruits to type their name and ensuring there's a replica signature.

"It's easy now," Byrd said. "You open up the e-mail, click the link and use your finger. It has a signing space and signs like you do on paper."

Peal said she could not say whether the NLI program would accept letters of intent from Esigningday, which doesn't have deals with any universities at this time.

"I don't have his program in front of me to even be tested out," she said. "I've seen some demos early on when he was developing it. I know he was trying to get it to the point to have a replica signature."

Mike Pugh, vice president of marketing for eFax, said fax use globally is pretty flat but entrenched in work places involving law, real estate, accounting and medicine. Companies such as eFax now have electronic signatures built into faxes.

The relevance of the fax machine on signing day comes down to the work flow of people who don't deal with these types of documents much, Pugh said.

"For a lot of guardians and athletes, this may be the most important document any of them deal with," he said. "You can imagine asking some kid to ask their mom whether they're running Chrome or Firefox on a home computer and realize if they have the wrong browser, maybe something doesn't work right."

Byrd, whose Esigningday service was once tested by a soccer player at Division II Gannon University, said he learned athletics department administrators "don't know any better" about technology. So lately, he's pitching the product directly to coaches and attended the American Football Coaches Association convention in January.

"What I've discovered is I'm selling to a group of three," Byrd said. "Compliance is the one that really manages the process. The coaches are going to be users. And the AD is going to be the one that writes the check for it. If I can get football on board, then everybody else is going to be on board."

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