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Oversigning is a process in which American college athletics football coaches/recruiters offer to high school seniors, junior college players, and current non-scholarship players recruits more scholarships than they are allowed to admit under the NCAA's 25/85 rule. That rule limits the number of new players placed on scholarship to 25 in any one year. Additionally, the total number of scholarship players on the school's roster may not exceed 85 at any moment. The math of this conumdrum often requires the football coaches to rescind scholarship offers. Critics of the process contend that too often, the bad news for the player is delivered only when it is too late for the player to negotiate a scholarship with another school. Oversigning occasionally occurs in other sports, the practice receives the most attention from media members and fans within college football.[1][2][3]

While oversigning is currently not prohibited by NCAA rules, there is a growing consensus that oversigning is unethical, that it permits salaried employees of the schools to exploit unsophisticated young adult males (This seems like a personal opinion) (You have some sort of reference for this?). It is worth noting that the Big Ten Conference outlawed oversigning in the 1950s and the practice is described in a book by the legendary Bobby Dodd as the #1 reason Georgia Tech dropped out of the Southeastern Conference in 1964.[3]

Atlantic Coast Conference

Florida State

After National Signing Day in 2011, Florida State University was oversigned by several players.[4] During his Signing Day press conference, head coach Jimbo Fisher said he expected several recruits to not be academically qualified to play in 2011 though Fisher did not give the specific number by which he had oversigned.[4]

Miami

In a December 2010 feature on oversigning, ESPN's Outside the Lines profiled former University of Miami defensive lineman, Stephen Wesley, who was told - in July 2010, just weeks before his senior season was to begin - that his scholarship would not be renewed.[5] Miami and then-head coach Randy Shannon did not give an explanation for Wesley's dismissal from the team, but many believed (as Outside the Lines noted) Wesley was cut from the team to make room for Seantrel Henderson, who announced he would attend Miami just weeks before Wesley's dismissal.[6]

Southeastern Conference

Several universities within the Southeastern Conference (SEC) have frequently been accused of oversigning.[7][8] Florida, Georgia[9], and Vanderbilt are usually noted as exceptions within the SEC due to their having signed the fewest total recruits among SEC teams over the past decade.[10] Georgia head coach Mark Richt has condemned the process, saying "I don't want to oversign, then tell one of the kids we've already got, 'You've got no value to us' and toss him aside. I'm not going to do that."[1]

On February 1, 2011, Sports Illustrated published a letter from the president of the University of Florida, Bernie Machen, in which Machen condemned oversigning-related practices - including grayshirting and the excessive use of medical disqualifications - as "morally reprehensible" and "repugnant."[11]

Houston Nutt Rule

In May 2009, the SEC passed a rule restricting its football teams to accepting no more than 28 NLOIs each year.[12] This move was widely viewed as a direct response to the University of Mississippi and its head coach, Houston Nutt, having promised 37 scholarships to new recruits for the 2009 season. Thus the rule is now commonly referred to as "The Houston Nutt Rule."[8][13]

Alabama and Nick Saban

2008-2010

In 2010, two Wall Street Journal reports suggested the University of Alabama and its head coach, Nick Saban, had engaged in dishonest and unethical behavior largely related to oversigning. On September 24, the Journal reported that several Alabama players had been pressured into requesting medical scholarships (not counted against the athletic scholarship limit) despite being healthy enough to play and wanting to remain on the team.[14] A couple months later, on November 25, 2010, the Journal reported that several former Alabama players claim Saban and Alabama lied about their reasons for leaving the school.[2] Upon removing the players from the Alabama team in early August 2009, just days before the NCAA-mandated scholarship deadline, Saban told members of the press that the players had "violated some type of team rule or policy."[15] The players told the Wall Street Journal they committed no such violations and that Alabama and Saban had only claimed as much so as to protect the image of their program in the eyes of future recruits. Saban was also questioned, in April 2008, about how he manages to be under the scholarship limit each year despite the appearance of oversigning, to which he agitatedly responded, "It's none of your business. Aiight? And don't give me this stuff about the fans' need to know, because they don't need to know. Don't even ask. Aiight?"[16]

2011

In early 2011, after National Signing Day, Saban and the University of Alabama again became the subjects of heavy media criticism after they again appeared to have oversigned. When asked about the appearance of being oversigned during his Signing Day press conference, Saban gave a 431-word response[17] in which he denied being oversigned but refused to clarify the situation by explaining how many scholarship players departed the program after the 2010 season.[18] Further raising questions about Saban and Alabama, Birmingham News journalist, Kevin Scarbinsky, revealed a few days after Saban's press conference that in numerous requests by the newspaper for the scholarship numbers of public universities in Alabama, the University of Alabama has been the only one to completely redact the numbers for every sport in which it participates.[19]

Tons of other schools have "appeared" to have oversigned on numerous occasions. If you are going to single out a specific coach, team, and year, then it is only fair for you to document every single other instance where oversigning has taken place. If you are not willing to do this, please remove these selected cases that you have arbitrarily chosen to include.

LSU and Les Miles

In 2010, Louisiana State University and head coach, Les Miles, were also the subjects of numerous oversigning allegations.[3][20] In August, with his program at the scholarship limit for the year, Miles asked two recruits, Elliot Porter and Cameron Fordham, to wait until January 2011 to receive their previously promised scholarships. (This practice is known as "grayshirting.") Fordham chose to stay with the team, but Porter decided to leave the school. A third player, Houston Bates, had previously been asked to grayshirt and decided not to attend LSU, instead signing with Illinois.[21] In December, ESPN's Outside the Lines broadcast a report in which former LSU quarterback, Chris Garrett, claimed LSU and Les Miles lied about the circumstances surrounding the school's decision not to renew Garrett's scholarship and Garrett's subsequent departure from LSU.[5]

South Carolina and Steve Spurrier

In 2011, South Carolina and head coach, Steve Spurrier, oversigned by several players. Both Oversigning.com[22] and Rivals.com[23] estimated South Carolina oversigned by 6 players when it signed 32 players in its 2011 class.[24] Additionally, on the day before National Signing Day, South Carolina rescinded offers to two other recruits that had verbally committed to signing with the school. One of the recruits, Lorenzo Mauldin, had been committed to the school for months[25] but learned he would not receive a scholarship offer when South Carolina faxed a notice of the rescinded offer to his high school on the day before Signing Day.[26] Walter Banks, the coach of Jordan Montgomery, the other recruit whose scholarship offer was pulled the day before National Signing Day, told the Wall Street Journal, "I told [South Carolina coaches] this was foul. I didn't have a clue until 18 hours before signing day, and if they say anything else, they're lying."[27] Banks also told The State that South Carolina coaches are "no longer welcome" at his high school (South Lake High School in Groveland, Florida) saying, "I cannot look a kid and their parent in the face and say you can trust what a University of South Carolina coach says."[28] Steve Spurrier admitted to the Wall Street Journal that "what we probably could've done earlier in the recruiting is tell them that this could happen."[27] He later added, "I think on [Feb. 1] we alerted both of them, talked to them and said ‘Hey, I’m sorry. This is where we are. We got all these other commitments.’ We didn’t like doing this.”[28] In late March 2011, Mauldin signed with Louisville saying that he came to believe that South Carolina coaches really didn't want him to qualify anyway.[29]

References

  1. ^ a b Staples, Andy (February 25, 2009). "Coaches Play the Curious Game of Oversigning in College Football". CNNSI.com.
  2. ^ a b Karp, Hannah (November 25, 2010). "Former Players Say Saban Twisted the Truth". The Wall Street Journal.
  3. ^ a b c Doyel, Gregg (August 8, 2010). "Bad Guys Utilize Over-signing, and it Has to Stop". CBS Sports.
  4. ^ a b Andrew Carter (February 4, 2011). "Florida State Doesn't Plan to Greyshirt Any Incoming Recruits". The Orlando Sentinel.
  5. ^ a b ""Over the Limit"". ESPN, Outside the Lines. December 19, 2010.
  6. ^ Thayer Evans (July 9, 2010). "Top Recruit Goes to Miami After Release From U.S.C." New York Times.
  7. ^ Low, Chris (May 24, 2010). "SEC Leads the Way in Oversigning Players". ESPN.
  8. ^ a b Low, Chris (February 9, 2010). "Exceeding 25 Signees the Rule in the SEC". ESPN.
  9. ^ "Georgia and Alabama". October 7, 2010. Retrieved December 5, 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |site= ignored (help)
  10. ^ "Recruiting Numbers". Retrieved December 5, 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |site= ignored (help)
  11. ^ Bernie Machen (February 1, 2011). "Florida President: Grayshirting is Morally Reprehensible Practice". Sports Illustrated.
  12. ^ Staples, Andy (May 29, 2009). "New SEC Ban Means Oversigning is Nearing its End Nationwide". CNNSI.com.
  13. ^ Solomon, Jon (February 3, 2010). "SEC Teams Adjust to 'Houston Nutt Rule'". The Birmingham News.
  14. ^ "Alabama's Unhappy Castoffs". Wall Street Journal. September 24, 2010. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
  15. ^ Estes, Gentry (August 5, 2009). "Nick Saban Opens Camp by Finally Clearing up Alabama's Roster Attrition". Press-Register.
  16. ^ Rapoport, Ian (April 15, 2008). "Saban vs. Rapoport: The Numbers Game". The Birmingham News.
  17. ^ Stewart Mandel (February 4, 2011). "Decoding Nick Saban's Surprising Diatribe in Defense of Oversigning". CNNSI.com.
  18. ^ Don Kausler, Jr. (February 2, 2011). "Saban Defends Practices of Oversigning and Grayshirting". The Birmingham News.
  19. ^ Kevin Scarbinsky (February 6, 2011). "Scarbinsky: Alabama's Don't-Tell Policy Hurts Saban's Oversigning Defense". The Birmingham News.
  20. ^ Staples, Andy (August 5, 2010). "NCAA needs to sort out priorities, focus on the big picture". CNNSI.com.
  21. ^ Trahan, Ken (April 15, 2010). "St. Paul's DE Bates signs with Illinois". NewOrleans.com.
  22. ^ "Time to Gear up for the Oversigning Cup". Oversigning.com. January 6, 2011.
  23. ^ "Unofficial 2011 Scholarship Breakdown". Rivals.com. Retrieved February 24, 2011.
  24. ^ Chip Towers (February 15, 2011). "Ten@10: Georgia not winning as many recruiting battles in South Carolina". Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
  25. ^ Phil Kornblut (July 23, 2010). "Georgia DE Commits to USC". The State.
  26. ^ Chip Towers (February 24, 2011). "'Shoved away' due to oversigning, Lorenzo Mauldin still hopes to end up at South Carolina". Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
  27. ^ a b "SEC Coaches Defend 'Oversigning'". Wall Street Journal. March 1, 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
  28. ^ a b Chip Towers (March 3, 2011). "Ten@10: Major recruiting scandals threaten college football". Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
  29. ^ Chip Towers (March 21, 2011). "Lorenzo Mauldin inks with Louisville, puts S. Carolina oversigning saga behind him". Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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