I never heard of this until I read this today... My thoughts would be that A. Oversigning should be allowed (to a limit), because doo-doo happens. B. Allowing too much oversigning could be unfair to the student-athletes recruited. Oversigning
I wouldn't mind a bit if there were limits on over signing. The reason it is done is because schools sign players who are either borderline qualifying or won't qualify. For the most part the Gators sign people they are pretty sure will qualify so we don't over sign. I know that FSU, not in the SEC, and Georgia have a number of people every year that do not qualify so they do over sign. FSU in fact signs people they know will not qualify to make their class look better, and that they might get the next year or year after when they do qualify. I didn't know that the Big 10 had a limit.
The simple solution to stop this practice is to do what Notre Dame does: run the recruits through the Admissions Office first, then recruit only those kids who qualify for your school... What many schools do; not just in the SEC; is they recruit 33 kids in the hopes that 22-25 will actually have the grades/scores to get in. The leftovers are usually not left out in the cold. Places like the WAC schools scarf up many leftovers every year, then try to make students out of them later...
That is what the Gators do also JO'Co, but I think a lot of schools don't want to do that because they would be turning down players they really want to take a chance on, or think that by signing them now they can get them later after the go the Junior College or Prep School route.
I think that a couple of oversignings would be ok, JO'Co, even for school's with Notre Dame's philosophy because "stuff" does happen, even with kids that appear to meet all the requirements. I think that is why the B10 finally conceded to DiNardo's request and now allow 3. I think that Notre Dame's philosophy is the correct one...I'm not normally one for promoting regulations, but I wonder if an NCAA standard (limit) wouldn't be a good thing.
Well it's all within the rules, and I think most of the teams who do it are doing one of sevearl things. 1. Actually assinging kids to previous years classes, which is what is done when kids enroll in January. Irish have started doing this. 2. Signing kids to get them onboard with the program, knowing that they won't qualify. But that after they go to Jr. College or prep school have the inside edge with them. 3. Signing them to get them on the list even knowing that they won't enroll because it helps their recruiting ranking. In the end it seems like it should be embarassing to schools like Auburn who had something like 10 kids fail to qualify for admissions. I think one thing that would be helpfull is that if recruiting services refused to count any kid who has not qualified for admission in the recruiting rankings. I don't really care for the process myself.