OT-Bama Fans on Oversigning
Read the comments for an interesting look at how Bama fans view oversigning.
http://www.rollbamaroll.com/2014/1/27/5349996/2014-roster-lookahead-the-number-crunch
January 28th, 2014 at 8:57 AM ^
Man - they are looking at actually cutting 8 players or more. How's that work? Aren't they given a 4 year scholorship? Just force 'em out? Ugly; dirty.
January 28th, 2014 at 9:35 AM ^
some schools explicitly offer 4 year scholarships, but most schools offer 1 year renewable scholarships.
January 28th, 2014 at 9:48 AM ^
Schollies are reviewed year-to-year. This is how Saban abuses the system...
Niccolò Machiavelli would be proud of Coach Saban.
January 28th, 2014 at 12:05 PM ^
Seriously, I like how the author says it is not fair to kids to speculate who gets cut, but seems to think that the system in place is fair. Cant hese kids go where they want, or can Saban also block who they transfer too?
January 28th, 2014 at 12:25 PM ^
The author seemed against it. He states this in the article.
I've been a vocal opponent of the oversigning.com crowd for a while
January 28th, 2014 at 12:45 PM ^
Oversigning.com is an anti-oversigning site. The author of this is FOR oversigning to a point.
January 28th, 2014 at 1:01 PM ^
oh my bad. I figured it was just a weird alabama thing like "thatsracist.gif"
January 28th, 2014 at 8:58 AM ^
The editor of that blog (i.e., their version of Brian) had this to say:
Don't care. Scholarship limits are designed to limit student-athlete opportunities in the name of competitive balance. Those who laud scholarship limits while suggesting that oversigning is harmful to student-athletes are hypocrites.Interesting take, but absolutely misguided. And it got enough thumbs-ups to become green.
January 28th, 2014 at 9:10 AM ^
because everybody knows that schools, notably St. Saban's Memorial Hospital do this. The kids have to know (if for no other reason than opposing recruters saying this), HS coaches know, and if parents spent 5 minutes researching they would also know.
Since it's a given that Alabama will cut 3-10 players every single year, kids are taking their chances and they know it.
January 28th, 2014 at 9:27 AM ^
The reason why I have such a hard time with oversigning is that despite kids know this happens, yet sign anyway, is that their ego thinks "this could NEVER happen to me" but when it does and they get cut, they're forced to go somewhere else that they can get playing time. Meanwhile, teams like Bama can hoard recruits knowing full well that they can just creatively get rid of them. It allows them to continue competing for the interests of the Hand's of the world when they don't have room that legitimate teams don't have.
You think Hoke wouldn't like to recruit a bigger class of 15 or so next year if he had a legal way to do so? Oversigning is unfair to the teams doing it right as well as to the kids that get cut who have a legit opportunity to start at a big name school not called Ala-fucking-bama if they knew ahead of time what would happen to them.
January 28th, 2014 at 10:14 AM ^
If Bama didn't oversign, then the kid who eventually gets cut would never have signed at Bama and would have gone elsewhere anyway.
The kids are not screwed. They take a shot at Bama knowing that 3-10 kids in their class will be cut in the next 4 years. Then if they are cut, they go elsewhere and play/ finish school/ whatever they would have done.
This is unfair from a competitive standpoint, but it's not unfair for the student athletes. Hey, it's not like a degree from Bama is impressive :)
January 28th, 2014 at 10:32 AM ^
How is this not unfair?
If you're saying a University has the right to evaluate and has the option to "cut" any athlete on a yearly basis, why isn't the student-athlete afforded the same option to transfer freely on a yearly basis?
Can you imagine the competitive balance there'd be if any Bama second-stringer were freely allowed to transfer to another school to start immedidately? Not practical, I know.
January 28th, 2014 at 10:56 AM ^
January 28th, 2014 at 11:10 AM ^
so do their coaches and their parents. They all know about the transfer rules. Yet, they still decide to attend Alabama even though they very likely have scholarship offers from other major college football programs.
I don't know if Saban is giving them a wink, wink, we will never cut you kid (which would be very unfair and scummy).
It's like somebody telling me, you can attend Harvard, have a 10% chance of being cut (which results in sitting out a year or you can go to Yale where they will always have space for you. Pick!
January 28th, 2014 at 11:54 AM ^
I don't get your analogy.
We're talking about "student-athletes" here. Key word being "student." Retention of scholarship should be more tied to academic performance than athletic. The system you ascribe to would be more akin to a semi-pro farm system. If the sole criteria for retaining your scholarship is a certain level of performance on the field, how is it fair that the University retains the right to a player as long as it wants but the player isn't allowed to test free-agency?
January 28th, 2014 at 3:01 PM ^
I think the point he is trying to make is that this can be resolved without additional rules if parents and students made smart decisions and wouldn't let coaches like Saben get away with this. But the reality is that too many of these parents and students thu\ink so highly of themselves that they think they won't be one of the guys that get "cut".
January 28th, 2014 at 5:51 PM ^
these high school kids understand this? You see the way many commit then decommit after saying their original school was the perfect place. I don't believe it. We were all high schoolers and I had no clue what I was doing. These kids might have a little more of a clue due to the internet and all, but totally understanding that at any given moment you could lose your free ride to someone the coaches like better. Especially after that same coach told you how great he thought you were and how his university needed you. Um... no. They have no clue.
January 28th, 2014 at 10:34 AM ^
Mostly because it's not like these kids are given objective information about this. They might here about oversigning and stuff, but then they get in-home visits from coaches who probably lie and/or distort reality to their faces. When you're 16/17 and a coach from a big-name program promises you the world, it's a little difficult for a few (SO FEW) news articles to make you second-guess them.
January 28th, 2014 at 11:06 AM ^
players that evaluate programs for facilities, coaching stability, player development, academics, student life, etc. are incapable of determining scholarhsip limits and an institution's idea of how to meet those limits?
January 28th, 2014 at 11:43 AM ^
Firstly, I don't believe for a second that when a recruit goes on official visits, he or she conducts PhD-level research with full statistical analysis of their chosen figures of merit.
Like most college-bound kids, they likely figure out which coaches they like, if they're getting fired anytime soon, and just generally feel the vibe of the university.
I'm not about to name names, but there have been several high-profile recruits in recent years that have said some truly uninformed things about the qualities of a few schools.
Secondly, that's a nice bit of illiteracy you have there. All I really said was that coaches who meet one face-to-face and at least appear to have a genuine interest in one's future are infinitely more convincing than a few news articles, especially to an adolescent. I have no clue how you pulled that impressive straw man out of my first comment.
January 28th, 2014 at 9:29 AM ^
I'm guessing that any player offered by Alabama thinks he's the Second Coming. I wonder if they are realistically considering the odds of this happening to them.
January 28th, 2014 at 9:48 AM ^
I would love to see an article showing the recruiting ranking of the people Saban is going to cut and then blast this knowledge to recruits so that they really know what they're getting into. I don't think they're stupid but I do think that they think they're all going to be starters and that simply isn't the case. Maybe they just don't care and they'd rather operate in a semi-professional capacity but they should knowingly make that choice.
January 28th, 2014 at 3:06 PM ^
I wonder if D. Hand knows that he is "taking" someone's scholarship? I think I opened myself up for a negbang, but I had to ask it.
January 28th, 2014 at 10:22 AM ^
I was odd seeing how casual the conversation was regarding the need to "cut" players from a scholarship. It had the seriousness of predicting the 2 deep in the spring.
January 28th, 2014 at 12:24 PM ^
January 28th, 2014 at 9:55 AM ^
It would be simple to fix over signing, maintain competitive balance, and provide more opportunities for athletes: simply set a hard cap on new scholarships (say 25) per year with no limit on total scholarships. Then there would be no incentive to cut a player.
January 28th, 2014 at 10:40 AM ^
This is the right solution, but creates huge title IX problems. The two dozen or so schools that are turning a profit wouldn't mind, but I doubt the rest of FBS would go along with it.
January 28th, 2014 at 11:08 AM ^
the impetus for the big five conferences to separate themselves from the rest of FSB, is in no small part so that they can offer more scholarships.
January 28th, 2014 at 2:32 PM ^
There's plenty of big five conference members that wouldn't be happy about an added 40 scholarships or so.
January 28th, 2014 at 11:27 AM ^
It only causes Title IX issues if you don't also bump the number of female athlete scholarships. Scholarships aren't that expensive in real dollars for a school, especially when we're talking about incrementing scholarships in existing sports - most colleges could easily absorb a couple dozen extra male and female students.
That said, if total # of schollies is still a big concern, simply set the yearly signing limit at a level that with "normal" attrition would result in roughly the same number of scholarships you have today.
Another advantage of the hard cap on new scholarships but no upper limit on total is that it normalizes the 5th year for non-NFL prospects - keeping a depth player on board for a 5th year wouldn't hurt the competitiveness of the team, so you'd have a lot less "firm handshakes". The upshot is that guys knowing they'll be 5th years could take more "real" classes and be more academically prepared when they exit football.
January 28th, 2014 at 2:35 PM ^
But it's not just additional scholarship dollars. If you assume 25 a year results in about 105 football scholarships a year, that means 20 extra scholarships to be added to women's athletics. Maybe this can be addressed to a degree by upping scholarship limits for individual women's sports, but those are already pretty high. What it likely means is adding at least one more entire sport.
January 28th, 2014 at 3:13 PM ^
Then set the limit at 20 scholarships / year or 17, or 22, or continue to not renew many 5th year scholarships, or whatever it takes to keep the average number of scholarship football players ~85, if Title IX is your big worry.
The "more scholarship slots" is not the primary goal of the "firm cap on new scholarships" approach. The main point is to end the unfair advantages of oversigning, and stop the bait-and-switch being pulled on 18 year olds trading a guranteed scholarship at a B1G school for a semi-guaranteed tryout at Bama/LSU. This is accomplished just as well regardless of the specific cap number.
January 28th, 2014 at 11:23 AM ^
I don't know the Title IX implications, but I love the 25 scholarships/year idea. In fact, not only would it limit the incentive to cut players, it would increase the incentive to graduate players. Want to make sure that you don't have to burn redshirts on special teams? Be sure that you keep those backup upperclassmen around. Want to avoid any desperate depth issues? Same solution.
January 28th, 2014 at 9:57 AM ^
The problem is, nobody "lauds" scholarship limits. I don't see anyone writing a blog post about how great scholarship limits are to the sport; simply that it's the rule that almost everyone follows and those who don't follow it use a loophole that can damage a kid's future. Way to a void the actual topic at hand.
January 28th, 2014 at 10:13 AM ^
This is a very, very weak argument. Schools like Michigan (and its fans) that don't like oversigning would love to have unlimited scholarships because it would eliminate the oversigning quandary. Schools like Indiana State (and its fan) that can't afford unlimited scholarships love oversigning because it brings in transfers. It also allows them to take more flyers so they can find diamonds in the rough. One of the biggest oversigners a few years ago was Troy, which was a successful team at the time, by the way.
The person he's arguing against doesn't exist.
January 28th, 2014 at 11:47 AM ^
January 28th, 2014 at 12:11 PM ^
One can easily criticize over-signing WITHOUT lauding scholarship limits.
The exact same view could be taken to Bama paying players. "Bullshit. Restrictions on extra benefits to players are designed to limit student's compensation in the name of competitive balnace for those schools that can't afford it. Criticizing giving Bama players BMWs while lauding restrictions on extra benefits is hypocritical."
Shorter version of the editor's response: "Fuck you. Roll Tide."
I don't laud scholarship caps. But if such caps exist, taking advantage of a 17/18 yo's ego and feelings of inconvincability all while knowing there's a 10%+ chance you're going to give him the boot down the line is straight up dick.
January 28th, 2014 at 12:25 PM ^
while we employ a strategy that both undercuts competitive fairness and further harms student athletes.
Anyways, it's only one of the grey areas being exploited. I'm pretty convinced that these schools are using creative labels to side step coaching limits.
I mean is it really Alabama's fault that they employ a janitorial staff that can also give players pointers on analyzing an opponent's three point stance and the play tendencies that tend to accompany it?
January 28th, 2014 at 8:59 AM ^
most important part of the discussion. Some of the 'Bama fans are Monty Python fans. I have a newly discovered respect for them.
January 28th, 2014 at 9:36 AM ^
January 28th, 2014 at 12:36 PM ^
I was thinking, "They know how to spell Monty Python in GIS?"
January 28th, 2014 at 9:02 AM ^
Because we had three students (Ash, Furman, and Rawls) all announce transfers, and I was thinking: the fact that we just do it less is no argument that we're any better.
But then I remembered that Ash, Furman, and Rawls will all graduate, so we honored the 4 year (3-year in Rawls' case) scholarship. I imagine they would rather go elsewhere to see more playing time, but it is also possible they received a firm handshake. However, I see UM as having held up its end of the bargain: 4-year scholarship and/or graduation, with graduation being the more important.
Shaky moral high-ground: still ours
January 28th, 2014 at 9:04 AM ^
January 28th, 2014 at 9:19 AM ^
Or is it purely their choice knowing they won't play much?
As in, if Josh Furman wanted to spend his last year at Michigan, would they uphold his scholarship still or say no? I do not know the answer to that, I want to hope they'd let him, but I do know that at Bama there is no choice.
January 28th, 2014 at 9:38 AM ^
January 28th, 2014 at 11:20 AM ^
January 28th, 2014 at 9:23 AM ^
January 28th, 2014 at 10:46 AM ^
The difference is when in the year kids leave not the number that leave.
January 28th, 2014 at 9:04 AM ^
they are so use to this happening every year that they accept it as a common practice. I'm not so sure they care about the kids or the universities reputation as long as Bama football is at the top after all it is the SEC.
January 28th, 2014 at 9:38 AM ^
This is correct. Further evidence is that their former Offensive Coordinator and the team decide to part ways (wink, wink) after a sky is falling two losses.