National Signing Day has become everything but a national holiday as fans tune in throughout the day to hear who has signed with their favorite school.

However, thousands of those high school athletes sign a National Letter of Intent (NLI) without complete knowledge of what they are agreeing.

Most sign without question. Fine print goes unread. Few realize just how lopsided the binding letter of agreement is in favor of the athletic departments rather than the student-athlete.

"Signing day is portrayed as Christmas morning, everyone opening their presents, everyone counting up what they brought in and then people ranking who had what," Michigan labor lawyer Michael Lee told then-CBS Sports Line writer Dan Wetzel in 2001.

"When in effect, many young people have just signed away their legal, if not constitutional, rights."

Offensive line prospect Seantrel Henderson, one of the highest-rated and most sought-after high school recruits of the Class of 2010, had leverage. As a potential superstar, Henderson had the power to dictate when he would sign.

He had his choice of schools. Scholarships were waiting on him after he didn't fully commit to a college on National Signing Day.

But even Henderson, a consensus top 10 recruit, succumbed to the weight of the looming decision and the National Letter of Intent. He put the ink on the dotted line, signing with the University of Southern California on March 23.

While Henderson had leverage, he still did not have the upper-hand -- something the NCAA battles to avoid relinquishing. In fact, tax records show the non-profit organization averaged spending over $10 million per year on legal fees from 2006 to 2008.

Henderson could have declined to sign the NLI and enrolled in the school without the letter, but he would have risked USC filling its football scholarship allotment.

Technically, the NLI is a voluntary program, but it is truly only voluntary for superstar recruits, such as Henderson. Otherwise, it's sign or risk losing the scholarship offer.

"Not everyone is like [Henderson]," former top recruit and NFL No. 1 overall draft pick Keyshawn Johnson said. "When there are four guys [a school is recruiting] at one position, if you wait, you're going to miss out. They'll give the scholarship to someone else."

Keyshawn has been working with star athletes through the production of a show titled "Big Man on Campus" that follows high school football players as they deal with all aspects of the senior year, including the recruiting process.

"It's bullshit," he said of the NLI, "but it's good for most guys."

In the past, coaching staffs signed more players to letters of intent than they had scholarships available for. The staffs then would convince a player to attend the school without financial assistance at least for a year.

The NLI now prohibits that action, but due to the yearly renewal process of athletics financial aid, it does not stop a coach from yanking the scholarship of an underperforming enrolled player in order to provide the necessary scholarship for the recruit.

It would seem that signing for four years of athletic eligibility promises a prospective student will receive an athletic scholarship with financial aid for four years. Instead, the academic institution only agrees to provide aid for one academic year. The financial aid must be renewed every year giving coaches the power to terminate the aid.

Plus, schools also have a loophole that allows them to escape out of the NLI agreement, if they so choose. If USC's football program needed to free up a scholarship for Henderson, they could have cut loose one of their lower-rated recruits by having the school deny admission to that recruit. A denial of admission to the institution automatically declares the NLI null and void and allows the school to back out of the NLI contract.

But if the student-athlete wanted to back out of the agreement? Unless he or she is granted a release by the school, the NCAA's "A Quick Reference Guide to the NLI" states a recruit must "serve one year in residence at next NLI member institution and lose one season of competition."

Attorney Rick Johnson, who specializes in legal ethics, said he thinks the NLI system is completely illegal, especially with the NCAA claiming to have nothing to do with the NLI besides merely doing the paperwork. The Collegiate Commissioners Association -- not the NCAA -- is in charge of the NLI.

Technically, the NLI has nothing to do with the NCAA, yet breaking the NLI agreement incurs punishment from the NCAA. When a recruit signs a NLI, he or she is locked to that particular school having to attend for at least one year or lose two years of eligibility.

"In the law, most contracts are forbidden from placing unduly harsh penalties in their provisions," Lee told Wetzel in 2001. "If you work for a company, you might sign a non-compete clause and cannot work somewhere. But it doesn't say you can't work anywhere on planet earth for the next two years. It is not supposed to blow the party gaining something completely away."

Essentially, recruits have to guarantee the school is the only place for them. The school doesn't have to guarantee anything, because they have the power and flexibility to drop recruits at any time.

Even though it is a "voluntary" contract, many lawyers claim the NLI to be a contract of adhesion -- defined by the law as "a standard form contract prepared by one party, to be signed by the party in a weaker position...who adheres to the contract with little choice about the terms."

One concern is that the contract is non-negotiable. While coaching at Memphis, Kentucky men's basketball coach John Calipari tried to add an "escape clause" for players that would let them out of their NLI if (and when) he left Memphis. The NLI struck down the additions and refuses to have anything be added or subtracted.

"The student-athlete does not have to sign [the NLI]," said Susan Teal, associate director of the NLI. "They choose to sign it, but we have one standard contract."

Teal said the total number of recruits signing the NLI make it impossible for it to be negotiable because the NLI office wouldn't be able to process so many different contracts.

Student-athletes are also limited in receiving legal counsel because of the potential of affecting their amateur status with the hiring of an agent.

"Everyone is allowed legal counsel in our country, except these 17- and 18-year-old minors," renowned sports agent Scott Boras said. "How does that make any sense?"

Rick Johnson believes everything the NCAA does is coercive toward the student-athletes.

"Why can't they have someone represent them? Because then kids would have choice. That would be a terror to the NCAA. They want sheep that just follow orders."

"There is some extortion involved because the kids have little options," Johnson said. "These kids have to give up their liberty rights. And it only goes on because it is so difficult to oppose the NCAA."

Johnson would know. He represented Oklahoma State pitcher Andrew Oliver against the NCAA in 2009 helping Oliver become the first individual student-athlete to win a lawsuit against the NCAA. In Oliver's case against the NCAA, Johnson said he had to face off against a team of six lawyers hired by the NCAA.

"It was awful going up against [the NCAA]," Johnson said.

However, Johnson said he believes the NLI agreement could be invalidated in a court of law.

"The NCAA denied that the NLI creates any contractual obligation," Johnson said. "They testified under oath that it's not a contract."

But there are reasons why no one has attempted to take down the NLI -- primarly financial reasons. Netting an average of more than $30 million in profits from 2006 to 2008, the NCAA can budget a substantial sum toward legal fees and are capable of throwing as much money as needed at a legal issue.

"Litigation is expensive," Johnson said. "You're talking a minimum $250,000 and that's just through a trial and not considering any appeals. Eighteen-year olds just don't have that money, and only a handful of their families do."

A class action lawsuit would be a possibility, but Johnson said attorneys are unlikely to take on the potentially lengthy case because class action suits are driven by financial damages, which would be hard to quantify in this case.

Johnson and Boras both mentioned Congressional regulation as one of the most likely ways the NLI could be invalidated.

There are benefits for recruits to sign.

The NLI does give the high school athletes a reprieve from the constant cycle of recruitment. Once a NLI is verified by an institution, the other 620 NCAA Division I and II member institutions that participate in the NLI must cease recruiting an individual.

But it is the person most crucial in the recruitment of the high school student-athlete, the head coach, that often creates the most issues (and release requests) with the NLI.

Prospects sign to play, be mentored and tutored by specific individuals, such as was the case when Demarcus Cousins wanted to commit to play at UAB, but declined because the school wouldn't agree in writing to release him from his NLI if head coach Mike Davis left the school.

"My whole point of committing to the school was to play for coach Mike Davis," Cousins told SI.com's Seth Davis in 2008. "If he gets another job offer or leaves for his own personal reasons, I want to be able to leave [UAB] without any problems. I need that in writing so there won't be any issues. That's real important to me."

However, it is explicitly stated in the NLI that a prospective athlete is signing with the institution and not for a particular coach.

Even with the current coaching free agency carousel where coaches may leave after only a single year for a higher profile position, the student-athlete is still subject to the NCAA's penalties even if the coach leaves before the recruit even gets on campus, unless he or she is released by the school.

The NLI has never even given student-athletes a say. Never has there been a student-athlete or representative for the student-athletes on the NLI Steering Committee. Never have student athletes had a chance to vote on changes to the the construction, composition or administration of the NLI.

"If they had a say, do you think these kids would actually vote for this [NLI]?" Johnson said.

Why is there no student representative?

This question, along with any other hard-hitting questions about the NLI, received an "I don't think I can answer that question" response from Teal. It seems the NCAA and the NLI have plenty of stipulations and contracts, but don't have any answers about those stipulations and contracts.