Oversigning and Bowl Wins

You can't say the max would be 110 because every team has some level of attrition.  Where it is a career cut short due to injury or a player who doesn't see the field who wants a transfer to another program.  By using your standard, Michigan would be considered guilty of oversigning, but we know this program has entered the season most of the time with fewer than 85 scholarship players (at least before walk-ons are given scholarships). 

Just going by numbers signed you really can't tell which teams are the worst offenders.  I don't think MIss St. is as bad an offender as the 137 would indicate, it's more a result of recruiting a ton of players who are questionable to qualify and a whole bunch never make it to campus in the first place.  Their results on the field certainly don't back that up.

But man, I can do without all the Little Bro comments.  We're talking a difference of 4 between MSU and UM, and this Little Bro thing is getting hackneyed.

Isn't 125 the maximum number of legitimate offers over 5 years? Your 85+25 doesn't account for players like Greg Brown.

So if we had played Clemson or Stanford, we'd be the bad guy? Odd that you state 110 is the max when we did 112 and then take a shot at msu despite them having a grand total of 4 more than us over 5 years.

Really interesting stuff. There's an obvious advantage to how a lot of the SEC recruits, which is the real reason why they've been so good

Oversigning is a real problem - and I hate to be the guy to do this - but this table isn't as meaningful or interesting as it seems.  In fact, I think this mostly reflects randomness.

Teams that benefit from oversigning benefit from it all season long and not just in the bowl game.  That means that they play tougher teams in better bowls because they've oversigned.  It might be that Oklahoma State had a much better season because of oversigning, but that oversigning led them to play a tougher Stanford team in a bowl as opposed to Washington or Cal or something.

Then again, the pattern here could be somewhat real (but exaggerated) if, for example, the SEC schools oversign like crazy, so they all have advantages no matter where they're slotted.

By now, unless someone has been pulling a Rip VanWinkle of sorts, any professed college football fan knows the SEC is tantamount to being a Triple A League or a testing ground of equal standing if the sport in question were baseball instead of football.

You are correct in your assertion that the Ncaa is a toothless tiger, however,  it is my contention that if those calling the games and those reporting on same, i.e., Herbie, Holtz, Mays, et.al., did their due diligence and informed the nation of the existing inequeties and the reason for the disaprity of balance instead of simply pretending the SEC is the best league in college football because their coaches and players work harder, the need for the ncaa to do anything would be a moot point.

Any fan paying any attention understands, and normally the talking heads that jump at the chance to be the first to say ¨I told u so,¨ are reluctant to do so because of one or both of two things: 1} they aren´t aware-a stretch of the imagination- or 2] to report the reason for the disaprity in talent would be a a refusal to follow a direct order not to do so by their bosses, thereby causing them to lose their damn cush jobs.

Let´s be honest and agree that those that bring us the supposed ins and outs of football at both the collegiate and NFL levels are perhaps, next to the U.S. government, as a whole, the most ineffective group ever assigned to do a task.

Furthermore, not unlike the government, the SEC is going to continue to break promises, manipulate, and do whatever it takes to continue to do that which best suits them, not for what they were actually to hired to do in the first place. To do otherwise would be foolish because if anyone really gave a fuck, neither of these two entities would continue to operate with such transparent disregard for the rules or even a pretense of decorum because no one has called either of the two out in the past forty years.

 

 

I watched all of the bowl games and a good portion of the sec during the season, and to be honest, there's no such thing as the SEC advantage. Out of the 12 teams in the league, 5 are legitimate punching bags: Mississippi State (Couldn't put away a 6-6 ACC squad whose best win was a reeling FSU squad), Ole Miss, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt. The other 7 are good, but not great, and their records are buyoed by these crap teams.

In the bowls, the SEC had 9 teams sent to the bowls, of which 7 have competed in bowls already. Of those 7, 4 were fair matchups, 1 was slightly negative, 1 was grossly unfair, and 1 was a favorable matchup. The SEC won 3/4 fair matchups, 1/2 negative matchups, and 1/1 favorable matchups. The Big 10 on the other hand had 10 teams sent to the bowls. Of those 10, 4 were fair matchups, 2 were slightly negative, 3 were grossly unfair, and 1 was a favorable matchup. The Big 10 won 2/4 fair matchups, 1/2 slightly unfair matchups, 0/3 grossly unfair matchups, and 1/1 favorable matchups. Wow, those percents are pretty comparable to the SEC! (If Ohio State hadn't given Florida 2 special teams touchdowns, the Big 10 would have had the upper hand there)

Give these good-but-not-great teams from the SEC bowl games against higher ranked and better record teams and see if they even come close to winning one of them. Vanderbilt was the only team that played an opponent with a better record than them and they got smashed... by a Big East team. 

Just sayin...

That is all.

At the risk of stating the obvious ...

How much would it help your team's competitiveness if, after every year, you could @#$% the gentleman's scholarship agreement and just drop the bottom 20% (in terms of production) of each recruiting class? *I* think that just might motivate (in an unfriendly way) everyone on the roster. Practices would be more competitive and so would the team.

that some schools and conferences choose to ignore the blatant abuse of oversigning ... because the NCAA simply doesn't care to set absolute standards for all conferences.

I can guarantee that if the Alabama kicker misses a game tying or game winning FG tonight ... Saban will remove the kid from the program.  Don't be surprised when the kicker receives his "medically related" release from the team thus giving Saban another scholarship to recruit with.

Go Blue!

How many chances does the B10 (and ND) take on players with character and/or academic issues? Less than half of that 37-player class Ole' Miss signed a few years ago is on campus, mostly due to academic and behavior issues. Certainly Ole' Miss is number one in legitimate oversigning offenses, but the willingness to take chances on some seedy dudes affects those numbers and I don't think that necesarily benefits those schools.

I think the difference can be seen when comparing the East and West divisions of the SEC. Of recently relevant class, Auburn has signed 25+ since 2006, Mississippi State 26+ since 2007, Arkansas  26+ since 2006, Alabama 25+ since 2007, LSU 26+ since 2006 (except 24 in 2009). All of these programs have been on the uptick over the past 5 or so years with the minor exception of LSU who was still strong before. Each school has added a premier coach whose recruited well and gotten the benefit of about/almost an extra class every four years.

The East meanwhile only South Carolina has recently been signing well over 25 on a regular basis, and they have obviously had an uptick recently. Meanwhile, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee who were premier programs in the once vaunted East division during the early part of the decade have been below their normal level the last couple years. Coaching has a major impact also, but I think the shift of power within the SEC is significant and is at least in part due to oversigning.

Where the numbers are from:

http://oversigning.com/testing/index.php/recruiting-numbers/