Let Me Tell Y’all A Story is a weekly column that’s usually not focused on sports. It’s brought to you by our partners at Chuck Owens, Alfa Insurance.

Alright, so technically, Let Me Tell Y’all A Story is a weekly column that’s not about sports.

However, in my mind, which is the editorial space for all things Y’all Sports, I have reserved the right to write about athletic memories for this feature and that’s what we’ll do today.

Wednesday began what’s known as the early signing period in the world of college football.

I’ve always loved this part of the calendar, even before high school kids could sign early.

I spent a couple years working in the sports information office at Copiah-Lincoln Community College.

The December signing day was a chance for our football guys at CLCC to pick their next football home.

You know Co-Lin has had a great season on the field when the Wolves have a bunch of players sign on this day.

That was the case on Wednesday, as I won’t even count the members of the Wolf Pack that inked with new schools, but I’ll just tell you it was a lot.

There were multiple to Power 4 Conferences, multiple to the same Division I schools and multiple to some top programs on the lower levels of college football.

Co-Lin had the number one junior college player in the nation in offensive lineman Jarmain “Big Baby” Mitchell. He signed with Arizona State after previously being committed to Mississippi State and most recently the University of Georgia.

The Wolves also had the top running back in the nation, Tay Boswell, and he signed with West Virginia. Receiver Matt Mayfield signed with Mississippi State, and I could write a bunch more words about all the other guys that inked today, but I want to talk about a signing day from the past that I’ll never forget.

This one happened in February, and it was for the high school seniors that were signing with Co-Lin.

It was 2015 and I can remember the year because I wrote a tweet that day for our school athletics Twitter that was maybe one of the most viewed pieces of social media that I’ve ever had a hand in (prior to a couple weeks ago……..repeat after me, it was not a coach).

On that day, Leo Lewis was the talk of ESPN and every media outlet after he signed with Mississippi State. The Brookhaven High linebacker was a verbal commit to Ole Miss, and his late switch to signing with the Dawgs set off cowbell celebrations up and down the Magnolia State.

He also signed another letter-of-intent that day with Copiah-Lincoln Community College. Not that the Wolves thought they would get the number one linebacker in the nation, but he had a special relationship with the coaching staff and if he ever did end up going JUCO, they wanted it to be in Wesson.

I knew that after Dan, an assistant coach, pulled Leo’s letter out of a pile that sat beside the fax machine.

Remember fax machines? Those things were the star of signing day prior to the transfer portal and NIL.

Dan and I were sitting in an office at student services, and I was posting the new signees with their name, school, and position on Twitter before the fax paper even got cold.

I’d then search different social media sites and grab any tagged pictures I could find of the guys CLCC was getting.

The announcement of Leo signing earned us a mountain of retweets and I think the MSU coaching staff assured everyone in the media corps that his grades would be fine.

However, that’s not the interaction I most remember from the day.

In searching for “signed Co-Lin football” on Twitter, I found a picture of a player sitting behind a cake at a table, in a gymnasium, surrounded by family and friends.

He was a tall defensive lineman, from a parish outside the New Orleans metro area and a decently sized high school. On the cake was an interlocking “C” and “L” in blue, with black icing piping.

The tweet read, “Congratulations to NAME REDACTED on signing a scholarship with Copiah-Lincoln College today.”

I called Dan over and asked, who’s this guy?

He squinted at the screen as he read the name and school wordlessly with moving lips.

“I’ve got no clue who this kid is,” announced Dan, after a few moments.

He got out his cell phone and started calling other coaches on the staff.

 No one had ever heard of this player. It was all fake.

I’d seen a national story a few years earlier where a guy held a press conference and had caps on the table representing Oregon and Cal. It all turned out be a fake too. A local news station contacted the school he picked for a quote. Those coaches had never heard of him.

And now, I’m looking at a similar situation, but he’s faking a signing with Co-Lin.

As a CLCC alum, I felt sort of honored. At least he didn’t fake sign with Hinds, I thought to myself.

I don’t remember his name, although I remember the school. I went on Twitter, now called X, to see if I could find the original post, but had no luck.

Quick aside.

I was a big user of Twitter at that point in my life. I then went about a decade without viewing it at all.

Recently I got back on with an account for Y’all Sports. I haven’t started posting there, but it’s a great tool for recruiting news, as the players still use it to post their offers.

Those offers always start with the abbreviation, “AGTG,” which fans of recruiting news know stands for, “All Glory To God.”

There is a whole world of jargon in recruiting, but that’s a story for another time.

Back to Twitter/X for a second, did it change most greatly when Elon Musk bought it and changed the name?

Cause dude, when you start a brand-new account and only search up things about football recruiting and high school sports, it gives you that, but it then throws in a heavy side of racism, violence, and questionable news, even when you aren’t into any of that.

That too, is a story for another day.

I don’t know what happened to that big kid sitting in front of a delicious looking cake in St. Landry Parish from a decade ago, but he gave me a signing day memory I’ll never forget.

I’m really no better than him.

Once, back around the same time as this story, I wrote a tweet that said I was committing to Mississippi State and another saying I was committing to Iowa State and maybe one other random school in football, all from my personal account, that clearly had a profile picture of me being just a regular dude.

It was an experiment to show how blindly people would share information without doing any research on who was saying what and what was being said. It just felt like everyone wanted to be first with every scoop, reposting without reading.

I proved my point as a Scout Dot Com writer from Iowa State sent a tweet saying that ISU had gotten a verbal from a big guy out of Mississippi.

I’ll save the expletive he called me after finding out I was a 34 years old father of two – that’s a story for another day.