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Knudson: Oversign Here

By Mark Knudson, The Mtn. Insider
January 30, 2012

Recruiting junkies are in their happy place this week as college football’s National Letter of Intent Day finally arrives. And there is much rejoicing.

Of course, there’s more celebrating going on in some places than in others. Specifically, there’s more celebrating in the Deep South than most anywhere else, mostly because there are a few extra scholarships given out south of the Mason-Dixon Line most every year.

Don’t be confused by this whole “85 scholarship limit” thing or what you hear about schools only being able to give out 25 scholarships in a single year. Yes, that’s supposed to be the rule, but it’s more of a guideline than anything else down in the land of poisoned oak trees.

That’s because the Southeastern Conference, more than any other, embraces the practice of “oversigning.” Oversigning is defined by the web site, www.oversigning.com, as “the act of accepting more signed letters of intent on National Signing Day then you have room for under the 85 scholarship limit.”

Sounds like a blatant violation of the rules, doesn’t it? Well, not exactly. There exists that ol’ favorite, the loophole in the NCAA Bylaws that the SEC coaches have latched onto. That loophole allows schools to add more players on signing day than they technically have room for as long as they cut down the roster over the next six months and are at the 85 scholarship limit by the start of fall camp in August.

Most conferences are against it and try to discourage their member schools from doing it. The SEC embraces it.

This is all very NFL-ish of course, and if it were acceptable to trim your college roster by cutting players to whom you had promised a four-year scholarship to when you signed them, then there wouldn’t really be an issue. However, it’s not acceptable. Removing players from scholarship isn’t really supposed to be part of the deal when they commit to attend your school before they’re even finished with high school.  It’s supposed to be a two-way street: Player and college make a four-year commitment to each other. When a player chooses to transfer, he has to sit out a year. There’s no punishment for the school when they manufacture a reason to drop a player from scholarship.

Sure, there is attrition. Kids do leave on their own; they may get in trouble with the law or academically. Yes, that happens everywhere. Normally, it’s just two or three a year. And that’s why the NCAA doesn’t limit teams to 21 scholarships per year, which would equal out to 84 over four years. They expect a small level of attrition, which is why they account for it with 25 as a yearly limit. Everywhere but the SEC.

An example: In 2011, Mississippi lost 15 scholarship players off their 2010 roster and proceeded – with the blessing of their conference – to sign 27 new players to letters of intent. That meant they were 12 scholarship players over the NCAA limit before they started spring football. And 12 kids then “left the program” after the school year ended. Hmmm.

The top-five schools in terms of oversigning in 2011?  I hope you’re sitting down for this: They’re all from the SEC. Ole’ Miss, South Carolina, Alabama, LSU and Arkansas combined to sign 49 more players than they were supposed to a year ago at this time. Alabama had to cut 10 kids – pretty good bet they were the 10 worst players in the program, huh? Second year in a row that number was double-digits.

Conversely, the Big 10 conference as a whole signed a total of six players more than they were supposed to. That’s one-half an extra scholarship per team.  Over an eight-year period from 2002-10, the SEC gave out 531 more football scholarships than the Big 10, which has its own rule in place about oversigning.  

This is not just about these SEC teams’ disregard for the rule and being over the legal limit and then kicking kids to the curb. It’s also about 49 top prospects that should have signed with other programs, maybe even non-SEC programs, last February.

And we wonder why the playing field is tilted to the south? In a recent vote on the whole idea of oversigning, all 12 head football coaches voted to maintain the practice in the SEC.

So go ahead and celebrate your favorite school’s freshly minted class of football talent. If you’re a Mountain West fan, do so with a clean conscience, knowing that the prospects in question are going to be given every chance to succeed on the field and in the classroom over a four-year period, and that they won’t be cut NFL-style prior to that because of a loophole.
See all of Mark Knudson's blog entries HERE.
The Mtn. recaps all of the National Signing Day activity across the Mountain West with Recruiting Roundup specials beginning Friday, Feb. 3 at 7 p.m. MT. CLICK HERE for the complete schedule.