“History repeats itself” is a cliche, but it’s also what makes it so painfully true.

Last night at the Academy Awards the American viewing public saw something that’s never happened.

Well, let’s take a step back. Last night we saw something we’ve never seen at the Academy Awards.

A little over a year ago mustache savant and family feud host Steve Harvey pulled the gaffe of all public gaffes by announcing the wrong winner of Miss Universe on national television. If this is news to you, then let me say welcome to the living world! Otherwise, most everyone knows how that entire fiasco went down.

The incident produced a bag full of great memes and forever gave the public right to ridicule Harvey — including the young lady who got duped by Harvey at the pageant.

Now, we the intenetsmen and women of the web have a new target — and it’s the last person you’d guess if you even know who he is.

Warren Beatty, the 79 year old actor who’s last relevant move was Bulworth, was tasked with announcing the biggest award the Academy gives out: best picture. As Beatty reached for the envelope, well... only the video itself can illustrate how bizarre a moment this was.

Yeah, that really did happen. Now as to what exactly caused the confusion there it not up for speculation on this blog — instead I would like to propose an alternative situation.

What if something like this or the aforementioned Harvey situation happened on National Signing Day? I’d make the argument it would be as big of a deal in the sports sphere as it was in the pop culture sphere if it were to occur.

The question I’m here to propose is: if a recruit were to make the wrong announcement on signing day — how would it play out? Well wonder no further, because we’ve got the full illustration here.

#NSDFail

Open scene: we enter a high school gymnasium -- not an empty seat in the house. At the center of the gym is a table draped in a navy blue and white table cloth -- the colors of our fake high school. On top of the table sit three, snap-back style, flat-bill hats:

A black hat with the Georgia “G” logo

A blue hat with the Florida Gator head logo

Another black hat with the interlocking South Carolina “SC” logo

Our recruit — let’s give him a nice recruit name... like Stanley Glover — sits at the center of the table in a pressed white shirt and black tie. He’s flanked to his right by mom, who’s wearing an elaborate scarf and smile while tapping her fingers on the table with anxiety.

To his left, Mr. Glover sits in a collard shirt with the high school logo on left chest patch — let’s just make it an ordinary block letter like “S”. His expression is that of bulldog who’s flight has been delayed for a third time. He doesn’t like how entitled this generation has become, and remembers when his generation didn’t make such a show of national signing day.

But Stanley — a four-star defensive tackle — is going to make a show of his announcement much to the chagrin of his father. He’s buried ear-deep in his iPhone with the microphone in front of him nearly touching his forehead. Standing behind Stanley are his teammates — also buried in their phones — bouncing around in anticipation of where Stanley will pick.

All of a sudden the red light of the camera’s come on from in front of the table. There are four camera’s: one from ESPN, two from local channels and one riggity old handheld propped up on a tripod by a 25 year old systems analyst trying to start his own recruiting blog.

Piped into the gym’s speakers comes the booming yet soothing baritone of Joe Tessitore, hosting the annual ESPNU signing day special. The TV camera’s zoom in on Stanley:

“AAAAAAALright Stanley you’ve narrowed your decision down to three schools, but before we get to your decision let’s ask you some cliched, typical question about how you came to this choice.”

Stanley looks up from his phone, nods in acknowledgement to Tessitore’s question:

“Well thank you sir. I just wanted to say cliche, cliche thank you and cliche, cliche tough decision but cliche, cliche I know this is the right choice.”

Tessitore voice: “AAAAAAAlright Stanley don’t keep us waiting any longer. Where will you be taking your talents this fall?”

Stanley looks to his hats, but takes a long pause with a slightly confused look on his face — as if he’s trying to calculate a tip for a waiter in his head. After a slight hesitation, he grabs the Georgia hat and snugly puts it on his head — twisting it a couple of times just to make sure it stays on his head.

The gym erupts in applause and cheers, Stanley’s Mom begins to bounce up and down and clap her hands in utter joy. Mr. Glover sighs with an expression on content as Tessitore’s voice continues to pipe through the gym.

“AAAAAAAnd it’s decided!! Stanley Glover is going to be a Bulldog”

While Tessitore continues to talk, a look of sheer horror comes over Stanley’s face. Something I would imagine to look like this.

Stanley starts looking around desperately, as if he’s seeking someone’s help. He stares into the camera worriedly:

Tessitore voice: “Stanley?”

Stanley: “Uh, hold on man. I need to do something real quick.”

The gym goes dead silent. The Glover’s both look at their son as if he violently broke wind at family funeral. Stanley grabs the brim and slowly slides the hat off his head and lays it gently off to the side as if he had hurt it. Stanley’s eyes slowly glance over to the other black hat on the table, and laughs nervously as if your boss had told a bad joke at the office party.

Stanley then picks up the other black hat on his table, delicately placing it on his head as the entire gym bursts into nervous chatter and gasps of awe.

Stanley: “I... uh, didn’t mean to do that. I’m actually committing to the University of South Carolina.”

Stanley’s mother stares at her son, mouth agape like she was a 22-year old Kappa Delta who had just been told Beyonce was “just okay.” As for Mr. Glover, I would imagine him to look something like this:

Tessitore: “Oh.... oh my.”

What do you think happens from there? What does twitter look like? How do the fan bases react? Give your suggestions in the comment section below.