The high school I went to, a large Jesuit high school in the northeast, sent lots of kids D1 for sports but also lots of people to Ivy league schools and the like. I thought the way we did it struck a nice balance.

Our classes started at 8:20 A.M. and the way they did it is that from 7:30-8:30 A.M, students could sign in our school's "commons." They had a table with our school's background and logo, a photographer, all that jazz. Local media could come if they wanted to as well. If your friends and family wanted to come celebrate with you, they could come into school a bit early.

However, there were a couple of rules:

1) You weren't allowed to play the hat game.
2) You had to actually have played the sport for the school your senior year (this was an issue with some hockey players, which is big business in the northeast).
3) Guys who were going to D3 schools for sports could also be part of the photo op and could "sign" too (though there is no NLI at the D3 level).