Recruiting question for those smarter than me

[mggoph]

How is it that Tennessee can have 32 verbal commits, but only have 23 seniors on their roster (not sure if they are all scholarship players or not)? Does that mean that at least 9 roster players will have their scholly yanked next year?

 

[Iceland12]

How is it that Tennessee can have 32 verbal commits, but only have 23 seniors on their roster (not sure if they are all scholarship players or not)? Does that mean that at least 9 roster players will have their scholly yanked next year?

Certainly not smarter than you but here's an answer. The SEC is among conferences that are allowed to "over sign", but after taking a lot of heat by WAY over signing, they capped it at 25. They can probably make as many "offers" as they want.

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2012/01/sec_learning_to_live_with_new.html

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- It's a new recruiting world in the SEC. Once the poster child for oversigning, SEC football teams are learning on the fly how to properly manage their scholarship offers so they meet the conference's new 25-player signing limit.

"Obviously, universities are going to have to make decisions on how to comply with 25, whether that's the number of National Letter of Intent and financial aid agreements sent out (to recruits) or the withdrawals of offers that may have been there," SEC Associate Commissioner Greg Sankey said. "Those are some of the things you're seeing. The first year is always a learning experience."

Oversigning hasn't happened only in the SEC, it's just most prevalent there. Signing more recruits than available scholarships allowed many SEC schools a better chance to erase recruiting mistakes. It also left some recruits without a promised scholarship.

So last spring the SEC passed a rule limiting the number of signees between Dec. 1 and May 31 to 25, down from 28. Twenty-five is also the NCAA limit of new scholarship players that a football team can add each academic year.

The SEC rule is still less restrictive than the Big Ten, which allows teams to sign three players more than the number of spots available under the NCAA total limit of 85 scholarships. The SEC never considered going that far. Just creating a 25-player cap was met with strong resistance by SEC coaches, particularly by Alabama's Nick Saban and Auburn's Gene Chizik…

There are hard caps and there are soft caps. The SEC's would qualify as a soft cap with flexibility, but still not as much freedom as coaches used to have.

The SEC rule -- and the national rule next year -- allows an annual exception for teams to sign more than 25. That is possible if one or more signees can be counted backward toward the previous year's class. There must be spots available in the previous class to do so.

The maximum 25 new scholarship players who can enroll each academic year are called "initial counters." Almost always, initial counters are players who were recruited to be put on scholarship upon enrolling for their first year.

How does counting backward work? If a team shows up in the fall and adds, for instance, 20 new initial counters to go with 65 returning players, it would be maxed out at the NCAA limit of 85 scholarships and there would be five initial counters the team didn't use..

Some critics of the SEC rule believe the limit could hurt the conference long term on the field. ESPN recruiting analyst Tom Luginbill said there has been far too much negativity placed on oversigning, especially because recruits show no loyalty to schools.

"When you limit a team's ability to manage their roster from signing day until the point where the class actually enrolls, you certainly are hindering the ability to sign all of the best players now," Luginbill said. "I'm fully aware there's probably a lot of people who would like to see this happen with the SEC having won six straight BCS titles."

During the SEC's current title run, four of its six national champions signed at least 14 more players than their championship-game opponent during the four years leading to the game.

Auburn signed 19 more than Oregon. Alabama signed 18 more than Texas. LSU signed 14 more than Ohio State. Florida signed 16 more than Ohio State. The only exceptions were Oklahoma signed three more than Florida, and Alabama signed six more than LSU.

 

[mggoph]

So what you're saying is that, not only are the rules not the same for everybody, but they aren't even enforced equally for everybody. Makes perfect sense!

 

[Norsk_Gopher]

So what you're saying is that, not only are the rules not the same for everybody, but they aren't even enforced equally for everybody. Makes perfect sense!

Yeah, this is weird. Why the heck aren't rules the same for every conference.

 

[Iceland12]

So what you're saying is that, not only are the rules not the same for everybody, but they aren't even enforced equally for everybody. Makes perfect sense!

No, I'm not saying that, but I was certainly surprised that an Alabama paper was!