At 6:30 p.m. last night, defensive tackle Sione Fua went on Fox Sports West television to verbally commit to playing football for either Stanford, BYU or Oregon, starting next fall. When Fua announced his intentions to come to the Farm, he provided a dramatic flourish to National Signing Day, a day on which 18 total players formally declared their intent to attend Stanford next season.

Scout.com ranks the incoming class 44th nationally and eighth in the Pac-10. Eleven of these players are offensive (five wide receivers, four linemen, one running back and one quarterback), with the remaining seven on defense (four linemen, two linebackers and a defensive back). Five of these players are prep All-Americans and 11 are All-Region selections.

Head coach Walt Harris was pleased with the incoming class.

“This was a good, solid year for us,” he said. “We’re excited about the progress we’re making. “

According to Mike Eubanks, who runs Stanford’s Scout.com site — a national network specializing in college football and basketball recruiting — the headliners of this year’s class are Fua, defensive end Levirt Griffin, running back Toby Gerhart and wide receiver Richard Sherman.

As a four-star player on Scout’s one-to-five scale, Fua earned the highest rank of any incoming Cardinal. Tempering the enthusiasm, though, is the fact that Fua may postpone his playing days by two years by taking a Latter-Day Saint mission.

Griffin was originally committed to California, but decommitted from the Bears to instead pledge with Stanford. Eubanks believes that he projects well at the college level as a physical pass-rusher.

“He’s a brawler,” Harris said. “He likes to knock players around. He’s just a physical guy — he has something like 39-inch sleeves and hands that can easily reach around a passer.”

Gerhart is unique in that he is also very talented at baseball. So gifted, in fact, that while he plans to be a dual-sport athlete in college, there is also a strong possibility that he will be an early-round draft pick in the Major League Baseball draft this June. While Stanford did not offer a scholarship to Gerhart for baseball, he figures to be a key contributor to the squad should he come to Stanford next fall. Eubanks believes this fact may encourage Gerhart to delay the draft.

“Gerhart is a risk,” Eubanks said. “The last time Stanford signed a multi-sport athlete, he never made it here. But we need him on the baseball team, and [baseball head coach] Mark Marquess doesn’t lose his players to the professional draft.”

Sherman is from Compton, Calif., an inner-city area not often represented in the Stanford community. As a versatile athlete — he’s an All-American in the triple-jump — Sherman can play both receiver and cornerback. Sherman’s ability to play in the secondary is significant, because it is usually difficult for Stanford, with its stringent admissions policies, to recruit at those positions.

“The question of where to play Sherman first [receiver or cornerback] will be a difficult one,” Eubanks said. “He may not match some of the most elite Pac-10 receivers, but he’s still very good. He is a Mark Bradford-type athlete. But Stanford also needs cornerbacks.”

Rounding out the signees are Stephen Carr, Mark Mueller, Marcus Rance and Austin Yancy at wide receiver, Brian Bulcke and Derek Hall at defensive end, Joe Dembesky at offensive tackle, John Kyed, Bert McBride and Andrew Phillips at offensive line, Tyler Porras at cornerback, Nick Macaluso and Sam Weinberger at linebacker and Alex Loukas at quarterback.

Harris repeatedly expressed enthusiasm for the attitude of the incoming class.

“We were looking for guys that really have passion,” he said. “How they carry themselves is so important. We want eager, bright-eyed, enthusiastic players. There’s nothing like coaching those kids. I talked to some guys in my office and they fired me up. I had one guy who was so excited, I thought he was going to jump across the table and give me a kiss.”