The BCS poll is not the only place that finds Auburn at the top. In the last 4 years, Auburn has signed 119 recruits - more than anybody else in the country......other BCS teams: Arkansas 109 Oregon 100 Va Tech 100 Oklahoma 94 UConn 92 Wisky 89 Stanford 81 Ohio State 78 Other schools of note - ND 82, Texas 86, Nebraska 96, TAM 93, M 93 The NCAA needs to take a fresh look at this issue....I get that there will be some attrition, everybody has attrition. It just seems unreasonable for some teams to get so many more mulligans than the rest. It is indeed a material competitive advantage and there does need be an effective standard. http://oversigning.com/testing/index.php/recruiting-numbers/ http://espn.go.com/blog/sec/post/_/id/10976/sec-leads-the-way-in-oversigning-players
I'm not sure how they can stop the process, you can't have more than 25 enroll, and they limit the # of oversignings now to 28 I believe. Still with the ability to have kids enroll in Jan and count against the previous years class or to ask them to wait a semester to enroll (gray shirting) so they can count against the next years class. You can still maniipulate things pretty well and get a lot of mulligans. Maybe the solution is to make kids who enroll early count against the class that enrolls in Sept, same for the gray shirts. But I'm guessing coaches would blow a gasket over that.
Is the 28 an NCAA standard or the new SEC standard? In any event, it will reduce the abuses from the craziness that went on in prior years, but a reasonable standard would be to limit any new signings to the number of seniors + early departures + some standard vacancy factor..... The standard now in the SEC as I understand it is 28 per year regardless of how many you need?! For example, if you have 10 graduating seniors, 1 early NFL departure and 2 injury related vacancies, you can still sign 28 kids and have the benefit of evaluating the talent for 6 months and then kicking to the curb, those kids to whom you have made a commitment - presumably - that now just don't measure up.....Ii'm not sure that is where we want to be with this, but whereever we are, I would suggest a uniform standard be applied.....it is a competitive advantage and can really create/perpopetuate a "dark side" to college football. Not good imho...
I think the problem with that is that in Feb you really don't know how many guys will come back. There are academic issues that sometimes take the whole spring semester and summer as well to sort themselves out, transfers frequently don't happen till after Spring practice. Is the date for declaring for the NFL after the LOI date? 5th years sometimes aren't known for sure by LOI date. It's not quite as simple as just setting a number....although a hard cap of 25 would not be a bad idea. They could still fudge the whole thing by running off players who after a fall on campus they don't think will work out and replacing them with EE's, unless they also cut the ability to count EE's against previous classes then they still get mulligans.
.....but that is true for everybody, putting everybody on level playing field. Surely with years of historical experience we can determine a number with some degree of accuracy that everybody can live with.....at present, the NCAA does not address the issue at all, other than to say you can't add more than 25 in any given year and a total on the roster in excess of 85.....it is silent on how many you can sign. Under the scenario where you lose 10 seniors, 1 early departure and 2 transfers, some schools can sign 28, others are limited to the 13 openings thereby creating meaningful advantage to the oversigners......that needs to be addressed on an NCAA-wide basis not just conference, by conference.
T, While it is not a practice that I admire, how is it a competitive advantage? It is not illegal so every team can do it if they want to. The teams that decide not to do it, do so for their own reasons. :?:
KP actually I think it is a conference by conference rule. I believe that the B10 has tougher rules with regard to oversigning. Only ND can do what they want, and we of course are always on the high moral ground! :wink:
KP, TOK is right, as it stands now the rules are written conference by conference and some are more liberal than others....the SEC has just instituted a max 28 rule which is a step in the right direction, but it is my understanding that the Big 10 prohibits the practice...you can't sign more than you have available scholarships, but I am by no means an authority on the rules..... If you have 12 seniors. 2 early departures and 2 other vacancies by way of academics/health whatever, you are limited to signing a max of 16 players.....the benefits of oversigning are clear....you get 6 additional months of evaluation, in addition to a few extra mulligans so to speak and you lock up kids who could otherwise go somewhere else....it's a big enough issue that I think there should be some uniform standard nationally....
T, If the Big 10 decided that then that is their decision, although someone might want to tell Michigan. It looks like they signed 27 last :?: year. Look, like I said I am not a big fan of this although I understand it, but it is legal and it would really work better if we maybe had an early signing period.
I've been watching this topic and wondering, what's the problem? No team can have more than 85 players on scholarship, and, I believe, no more than 25 scholarship players in each class. No matter how you go about it, the limits are there for everyone. If there are legal ways to manipulate each class via early entries, gray shirting, etc., to gain 2, 3, or 4 players in a given year, so what? It evens out eventually. I'm not that smart, but I can add and subtract numbers below 100. :roll:
Sid, it would seem to me that it's a question of luring some kids in dangling a scholarship in front of them (over the 85 limit) and then dumping them...knowing all the while that some are going to get dumped. Unfair to the kids and a competitive advantage with conferences that don't do that. There will always be losses so going a few over the 85 should be allowed...but what is the best number? Unless I misunderstand.
I kind of agree with Sid. I do have heartburn with schools that sign over the 25 limit each year, and are willing to take a chance that some won't qualify to even out the numbers. I don't have a problem with taking 25 each year... as there will always be attrition - and I'm not talking about cutting loose those that aren't living up to the hype. I know the Aggies are losing four guys to injury retirement this year alone, and there might be one more later.
Sid, I think Stu is right. If you can convince 30 guys to sign LOI's on signing day and you don't have to make a decision on who will actually be allowed to enroll in Aug then you get extra time to evaluate them and if there is an academic problem extra time to let them work it out. So in you can take some chances and worst case senario is you have to tell some kid ...ooops..which has happened. And he has to find some place else to go or come as a walkon, etc. In the end you can get an advantage by oversigning in terms of building your football team. You have more numbers to work with than your competition in terms of deciding who goes on the 85 players list. For example you really like player A who is a great CB but you are not sure you can get him qualified academically, so you also sign player B who is definitely qualified. If by August Player A has never made it you are still covered at CB, if Player A does get qualified, then there will be an ooops and somebody won't get a promised scholarship in Sept.
I understand all of that reasoning. It's an individual program decision to do those things. I don't see where it necessarily gives the oversigning program a competitive advantage in terms of 1, 2, or 3 fallback signings or "oops" kids. I might be naive about this. I'd like to see hard evidence that this kind of situation resulted in a program's performance being boosted higher than if it had not taken place. I guess my position is that in a sport where you have an 85 player roster with 22 players on the field for extended periods of time and a backup roster of another 22 or so players, this practice does not appreciably affect the depth or quality of your team. Like I said, I could be wrong, but I'd like to see proof of my wrong rationale. Further explaining my thinking, IMO it's your ability each year to recruit the best 20-25 players you can get and coach them over 4-5 years that makes or breaks a program, not your ability to line up 25-30 kids, hoping to get the best 20-25 from that bunch. As in any civilized discussion, I'm open to contrary reasoning.
Without going into the potential "dark side" of the practice, two things here represent competitive advantage - 1) a longer evaluation period - up to 6 months - to see first hand against first tier competition if a kid is going to be able to help the program over and above another that would count against the 85, in addition to working on any academic issues that may be present, 2) stockpiling kids who under other circumstances would be signing with somebody else...... To put it another way, Auburn has had the benefit of working out 119 kids , competing against others on their roster to find the best 85.....Notre Dame has only been able to bring in 82 in the last 4 years to find their best 85......that's alot of mulligans, like an extra 2 recruting classes....just unreasonable in my opinion, not to mention the benefit derived by taking them off the market and/or "seeding" your favorite JUCO's for further assessment..... It's similar to golf.....my score will ALWAYS be better if I get more mulligans rather than less.....the more I get relative to my competition, the greater will be the difference between my "real" score and my posted score and the greater will be the advantage..... The NCAA is silent on the practice leading to material differences in the practice by school and in some cases by conference.....given how meaningful the advantage can be in some instances, there should be some nation-wide standard around which schools/conferences can choose to be either more or less strict.....not unlike academic requirements. There is an NCAA standard, some schools/conferences can choose a higher standard if they are so inclined but it serves to limit to some degree the magnitude of the potential advantage..... KP, if you'll check, M's big signing number was likely just after the arrival of RichRod when kids were jumping ship in droves creating big vacancies thereby allowing for the big classes without oversigning......Mallet is a good example and Justin Boren - an all conference lineman for us both came from M when RichRod was hired.
T, If you're explaining you're losing. You're explanation for UM works for everyone. Apparently it is not a Big 10 rule. Michigan did it.
A couple of points here. Notre Dame decided to not sign more than 25. Nobody made them. Auburn doesn't get to work out 119 kids. Some of those kids go to pro baseball, some don't make the grades to get into Auburn or make the NCAA standards, some don't enroll at Auburn until the next January, sitting out the season, but when that happens a slot in the next recruiting class is taken up. Sometimes it does result in some sketchy practices, but alternately it is a legal tool to account for other losses. You can make more than 25 offers but you can still just sign 25 per year to scholarships.
By my count, going back over the last four years lists, the Gators had 93 recruits. However only one time that I remember, it was this past year, did we have more commitments than we had room for. We could have been one over this past season and a player had agreed to wait and come in a semester later. However by the end of recruiting a spot had cleared and he came in with the rest. I don't think large classes necessarily mean over signing. Players leaving early, transferring or just quitting can create more room that might seem to be available at some point.
Absolutely agree.....I have no problems with large classes. I have problems with oversigning. Large classes don't necessarily mean there was any oversigning if there were many vacancies. I don't think so KP.....the rule is on oversigning, not class size......the issue is not how many you sign, but rather how many you sign relative to the number of vacancies on the team. If you have 27 vacancies, signing 27 kids is not oversigning. If you have 15 vacancies, signing 27 is gross oversigning. SEC schools with 15 vacancies can sign 28 kids....Big 10 schools with 15 vacancies can only sign 15 kids so it doesn't work for everyone. That is the essence of the differences..... We may just have to agree to disagree here. If you don't believe that the larger class sizes that Auburn signed were a meaningful benefit to them in filling their roster with the best possible players then we can just disagree and remain friends.....if it was no benefit, then there should be no problem setting standards to avoid the "sketchy practices" you referenced.....