Kentucky Football: The Opening, Elite 11, And Why You Should Care

Hank wrote about The Opening and the Elite 11 football events taking place this weekend a couple of days ago. today, I want to give you more information on SB Nation's coverage of these events, which is pretty extensive.

Why should Kentucky fans be interested? Well, the #1 reason is that 2014 Kentucky commit Drew Barker is participating in the event, and it could have an impact on whether or not he is eventually elevated to the very top tier of quarterbacks in the 2014 class.

Just for kicks, here is the Drew Barker highlight reel. These are accumulated highlights from some camps and games, not for the Elite 11 event.

Another reason is that there are several players in The Opening event that Kentucky is recruiting, including:

• DB Jamal Adams - Arkansas, Baylor, Florida, Florida State, Iowa, Kentucky, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Ole Miss, TCU, Texas, Texas A&M and West Virginia.

• DB John Bonney - Auburn, Baylor, Cal, Cincinnati, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Houston, Kentucky, Louisville, LSU, Michigan State, Nebraska, North Carolina State, Northwestern, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Stanford, TCU, Texas, UCLA and Virginia.

• DB Kendarius Webster - Arkansas, Clemson, Florida State, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Missouri, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Vanderbilt.

Finally, you should care because this is the biggest gathering of top national recruits this year.

Some links to other SB Nation coverage of this event:

• SEC schools sending a loaded group of commits to The Opening

• The Opening super group is pinned just below the top articles in the cover. Clicking on that will take you to all of SB Nation's coverage.

• The Elite 11 SB Nation hub

What's all the fuss about?

It is very unusual for us to pay attention to national football recruiting, and I have to admit, it's really refreshing to feel motivated to participate in the college football recruiting process for the first time. We are used to covering basketball recruiting, but now that Mark Stoops & Co. have got us all excited about football, I think that we in the Big Blue Nation should jump in with both feet.

Hank has been doing incredible work on this all summer, and he's continuing to do so. I will have a couple of interviews with some of UK's incoming 2013 class up later today and tomorrow, with more hopefully to follow.

So for now, just catch up on what's happening and follow Kentucky's football recruiting. You'll be glad you did, and it will just make the next few seasons more and more exciting as Kentucky finally looks to get itself back into the SEC as a meaningful football participant.

I'm excited. You should be, too.

[ADDENDUM]: I just got a message from SB Nation's recruiting guru, Bud Elliott, that Barker didn't have a very good day yesterday. Hopefully, today will be better.