Semi OT: Over Signing, Sat...ahem, Saban speaks

Can we stop spelling ESPN as ESecPN now?

i still don't understand how the NCAA lets this keep happening. Damn loop holes

has the cajones to take on the SEC on this blatant area of abuse that is adversely affecting student athletes?  I agree, Saban is a self-serving d-bag.  Love his comment:

This reminds me of one of the ESPN sportsnation voting thing on the bottom of their homepage.  One day it was what coach would you let recruit your soon?  The options were: Saban, Mac Brown, Tressel, and Kiffin.  The runaway winner at about 67% of the votes was Saban. I couldn't believe it. 

P.S. I voted for Brown.

Actually ESPN has addressed the oversigning issue.

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=5935634

ESecPN.go.com?  An extension of the Go Network?

You know, http://go.com/

Isn't this everybody's default homepage?

To be fair, who DIDN'T oversign recruits in NCAA Football '11, '10, '09, etc... Though I did feel like a douche when I eventually had to cut like 12 players from my roster :(

Damn 70-Scholly limit.

As others noted, ESPN touch on this as well, so I'm not going to cry conspiracy on their part. And to be fair, ESPN has bigger promotional fish to fry when it comes to over-promoting anything in NY/Boston.  

But to the bigger point, this is all bluster until something legitimately happens to teams that oversign (and not just in the SEC - the ACC has a sordid history, and the B12 has some offenders as well) and otherwise cheat.  What happened at USC, IME, scared the Pac-10 and damaged the brand a bit for USC (despite what this recruiting class showed, I think you'll see Kiffin out the door soon and USC will suffer in a couple of years), and no AD wants to see that happen at his or her school.  What it will take is a team like Alabama, LSU, or Auburn stripped of a championship and/or severely punished, to the point that presidents and alumni complain about how their school is portrayed.  Think about how UM fans and alumni bristle when people bring up the Fab 5, and now think how die-hard SEC fans will feel when people say they are cheaters and poke fun at their lost championships.  That is when change will occur - when enough people are embarrassed by what happens behind closed doors that they call for some real change at the collegiate level.

A quote in the article from Allen Wallace of Scout  "You're asking him to put his moral obligation to the player above his obligation to the school."  THIS IS COLLEGE.  THESE ARE 18 YEAR OLD KIDS. If the moral obligation to the student is in contradiction to an obligation to the school then shame on the school. If this is the case then the entire system should be burned to the ground.

That they've supposedly written themselves off the team that's contentious and more the notion players still on the team haven't.

All I can say is THANK GOD the SEC doesn't shoot themselves in the foot like the Big 10 does.  Your own "oversigning" high and mighty moral rules only serve to make Michigan and the rest of the Big 10 poorly competetive, as exemplified by Bama's crushing of Michigan State 49-7.  Everywhere I looked on Michigan's blog sites where fans are lamenting "oversigning", you could smell their insane jealousy of the SEC and of Bama/Saban in particular.  Why is Saban such a demon to you guys?  He's not broken any NCAA rules.  Ole Miss has the most oversigned this year, but they are not being crucified.  If you crunch the numbers over the past 4 years, Auburn even has more "oversigned" players than does Alabama.  You don't hear the players who leave the team due to medical hardships, the guys who transfer out because they just couldn't compete with the talent level of their college, etc. whining like you guys in the Big 10 are.  At least they understand that college football is big business and it isn't a pansy world where "life is fair".  They understand very well that if you can't compete, you're going to be on the bench.  Should they stay on the bench at their beloved university of choice or, for the good of the team, transfer out for more playing time at a less competative school?  Saban says he hasn't forced any player to move on.  He sits down with them and explains reality to them and then gives them options.  Rodriguez, I assume, does the same thing.  Then the coaches have to try to get enough signees to reach their total talley of 85 scholarship players.  Who is hurting the kids more... 1.  Saban, who tells kids what their chances of playing really is and offers the injured ones a medical hardship scholarship for a college education or a transfer to another school where they'll likely have a better shot at playing, or 2.  Rodriguez who can't even give borderline achedemic high quality players like Demar Dorsey a shot to play because of dumb self-imposed rules by the Big 10?  The trouble with the Big 10 is that you are a bunch of whiners who believe somehow that you are on a higher ethical plain than everybody else!.  If you want to sit on your pedestel and cry about other conferences figuring ways to have the best football teams while at the same time being realistic with the kids, just keep at it, for all the rest of the NCAA cares.  According to the numbers everywhere I looked, Michigan had 17-19 scholarships available going into recruiting season, but somehow, magically, through transfers and losses of great players like Demar Dorsey because of Michigans's "achedemic standards", Rodriguez signed 20 players total.  So he "oversigned" one to three players, anticipating team members' transfers, drop outs, and achedemic non-qualifiers.  How THE HECK can you whine and complain with a straight face that he's somehow better than Saban?  They both "oversign", and have legitamate reasons as to why they do it they way they do.  As long as the numbers come out to be 85 scholarships by the beginning of the football season, you're within NCAA regulations, PERIOD.  So the SEC oversigns more than the Big 10... so what!?  Spurrier said that oversigning is "helpful" because so many of the players in the state come from underprivileged backgrounds and may not qualify academically.  He said the Big Ten, which has curbed oversigning for decades, is making a mistake by doing so. "I think that really hurts them a lot," Spurrier said. "They end up giving scholarships to a lot of walk-ons."  Keep whining Wolverines... and being irrelevent in competition to boot.