OT-Bama Fans on Oversigning

If we look at this as a business, which lets face it, College Athletics is a business, why shouldn't colleges be allowed fire its employees?  In essense, that what oversigning is. Firing its players.  It happens in the real world.  You don't get the job done, be it year one or 5, you can get fired. There is logic there.

But at the same time, football is not a "real" job and 95% of kids are not yet experienced enough or have the knowledge to compete with kids 3, 4,and 5 years into the program.  And that's where I get hung up.

I think the NCAA should make up some formal rule about it.  Allow it or don't.  Period. No between the lines crap.  And cap it at a low number.  3 or 5 total. And if you allow it, the kid has to be either a Junior or Senior.  You can't cut freshman or sophmores.  And if you cut the person from a football scholarship, the University must give the now normal student a scholarship of some sort to help the student get his degree.  Because really, that's what it's about.

Now that I think about this more I don't like it at all. As much money as these guys make, they'd continue to cut players every year.

But still, part of me says if the kids a goof in the classroom but is staying eligible, and he half asses it on the field so he doesn't get PT, teams should be able to cut the person from their scholarship and give it to someone new who might try a little harder.

Last year he jerked a kid's offer after he committed to Bama because a higher ranked kid said he would commit to them. 

While I can understand that teams want to acquire the best talent this is the kind of thing that should give your program a black eye not elevate it to a higher level.

I saw someone on Scout posted a list of the top 10 schools with over 100 + signings the past 4 years and 2 of them just played in the title game. 2 other programs LSU and Bama are in the hunt or win it all every year.

These schools are cutting the kids who didnt pan out and get a shot at replacing them with better players sooner than 4 or 5 years. So our School plays the good guy role and struggles and Bama can drop a 3rd string Lineman who stinks for a 5 star every year. Sounds fair to me.

Them Northern Agitators are agitating again.

Seriously, if the kid (16/17) can't see it and the parents let their kids go to lease schools...well I don't feel bad for guys who do not get there degrees or have "big" school names on them.

I know if my children ever get into this situation as with most of us were not going to care about football before our children's needs (degree and not a piece of meat), even if the young man disagrees (just like I would of when I was young).

I'll hang up and listen.

I really don't care.  Let 'em oversign.

The best argument I've heard in favor of oversigning is that almost all other scholarships can be yanked if you don't perform. For an academic scholarship, if you don't get the grades, no more scholarship. For a music scholarship, if you don't perform up to their standards, no more scholarship. So why not football?

I still don't like oversigning, but so long as the coaches are honest and upfront about what it's going to take to renew the scholarship, I don't have a moral issue with it.

Also, I think it's worth noting that SEC schools need to oversign more due to the state of public schools in their recruiting footprint. It's a sad and unfortunate truth that more kids in the South aren't going to qualify due to, among a myriad of factors, schools that don't adequately prepare them to qualify and stay qualified. That's not to say that Midwest schools are without flaws, or that all public schools in the South are garbage, but it's generally true.

Some of these comments are just insane.  Yes, players leave from schools because they worry about playing time, but never 8, and when you factor in "career-ending" injuries that get them booted to DIII, it becomes incredibly murky.  Of course, this being Alabama I doubt they won't be able to make the numbers work out, but this is why when I hear guys talk about wanting to play at Alabama for "education" or "family" reasons, I just laugh.  Saban would boot his own kid to the curb if it opened up a roster spot.

Is Urban using SEC practices to circumvent scholarship penalties? 

The figures comparing for total class sizes over the past 4 years for UM vs Ohio have left me scratching my head.   With Ohio already having commited 6 more schollies than UM this year.  Ohio websites claim that Ohio can take 3 more (which could total as many as 25-16= 9 schollies more than UM for this year and for the past 4 years' total.*  Yet, the NCAA said they should have 3 fewer total roster spots during each year of Urban's tenure.

Ohio boosters will try to create a giant smoke screen with the complexities in determining allowable class size.  But I wonder: Can the wide discrepancy between Ohio and UM really be explained by the usual factors (unrenewed 5th years, early NFL departures or normal attrition)?  Remember, both teams had coaching changes in the past 4 years. 

Most imporantly, are such inequalities what the NCAA intended when it supposedly "penalized" Ohio?  Would the threat of such "penalties" deter future cheating--or would they just encourage coaches to act more and more like Saban?

*Total recruiting class sizes so far (UM,Ohio) per Rivals

2014 (16, 22) or (16,25)**

2013 (27,24)

2012 (25,25)  Urban starts at Ohio

2011 (20,23)  Hoke starts at UM

2011-2014 totals (88,94) or (88,97)**

**if Ohio takes 3 more and UM stands pat.

The opportunity to take a job at a place which plans to work you to your physical limit while paying you peanuts or next to peanuts but which might be the key step to leads to a great professional position is actually not unique.

Once that was the path many physicians went through. To practice medicine, one needs to complete a medical degree and do at least one year of internship somewhere (practicing under some sort of supervision - usually limited to a facility - which is why the term intern comes from - the people are interned to that hospital). For many decades (about from World War I to the early 1960's) most physicians just did that. They put in their one year and then got their license and practiced. If you wanted to specialize you needed to do more and complete a full residency of three, four, five or six years. At that time, the need for specialist was felt to be low so it was common place to trim the resident roster each year. A surgical program might take in 12 or 15 interns; cut down to 8 2nd years, 4 3rd years and ultimately 1 chief resident (4th or 5th year). Often they were paid with free room, board and a tiny stipend which would barely keep the mostly male interns in cigarettes (which they almost all smoked) . This is when a pack cost 25 cents in 1950 and about 50 cents in 1960.

This was called the pyramidal system - broad base with only a very narrow capstone. Why did people go along with this? At that time it was still easily possible to be a good doctor and have a successful practice without completing a full residency because only the specialists did that. The typical Dr. Marcus Welby did not do that. This was even a plot point on the TV show Mad Men (The husband of Joan, Don Draper's office manager, was cut from his surgical program). There were plenty of good job opportunities so people went along with it.

What changed the system is that in the late 1960's and onward, the need for specialists and growing awareness that a single year just wasn't enough to ensure even general practitioners had enough training led to our current system where now everyone basically completes a residency. It is also now very hard to get a good position without completing a residency. Not completing a residency means not being able to be board certified which means in many places inability to be on staff or on some insurance panels.

So unless there is a huge demand for professional caliber athletes, it is hard to imagine that some sort of manipulation won't go on and that kids will still agree to this uneven bargain. They all believe that they'll be the ones who'll make it and pretty much accept the risk.

Why would someone commit to Saban knowing he do his players bad like that ?