Feedback!

We love our readership here at oversigning.com and truly appreciate the time anyone takes to read this site, much less send a response.  Our readers have a voice, and with that an email from: Fury

"Your site would have more credibility if you had a clue. The reason the SEC signs so many, is because they are in a recruiting hotbead & THEY CAN.

You can talk about how many players are signed on signing day, but it is frivilous. You currently list Alabama as signing 29 this year & 27 last year, but you fail to recognize that THREE recruits are being counted TWICE in BOTH lists. Theses are players who delayed enrollment, and show up on multiple signing classes. This happens all the time, and shows that you all your statistics are incomplete, and not withstanding. The signess ABSOLUTELY DO NOT MATTER. Some signees don’t qualify, some aren’t on athletic scholarship, some delay enrollment for personal reasons, & some sign MLB contracts. The fact is, every school knows only 25 can enroll & only 85 are on scholarhip – AND THEY MAKE THOSE DEMANDS. EVERY scholarship at EVERY school is awarded on a 1 year basis that must be renewed. Football signees ARE NOT signing 4 year agreements, that is against the NCAA by-laws.

Furthermore, check out these numbers:

In ‘08, Bama signed 32, only 23 enrolled in the Fall to “count” on the ‘08 class. In ‘09, Bama signed 27, only 22 enrolled in the Fall to “count” on the ‘09 class."

So where do we start?  "The SEC signs so many players because THEY CAN" or "signees ABSOLUTELY DO NOT MATTER."  Or, "all of your statistics are incomplete."

We'll start with a bottom line:  There are no excuses for going over by 1 player, much less 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, or like back in Boddy Dodd's day, 20-25.    When you have 66 returning players you should sign 19, period.   And that doesn't mean you should gather a pool of 28 signed letters of commitment on signing day and narrow it down to 19 legit players by some date in the future.   

We address the other points after the jump.  Click the link to continue reading >>>

This is why we would like to have all teams report their budget numbers prior to signing day so that everyone knows exactly how many players each school truly has room for. 

Programs all over the country already operate that way.  Most coaches know exactly how many slots they have, they know with a fairly high level of certainty whether or not a recruit is going to qualify academically, and they don't load up on signees knowing that if all of them make it someone has to get cut in order to stay under 85.  Most programs, if they sign a player and he doesn't make it, are just out of luck (they don't have 2-3 recruits in line waiting to take that slot), and that's why they don't do it.  And that is not us making something up, look at the numbers.

Doing something just because you can.  Lane Kiffin left Tennessee in the middle of the night to take the USC job because he could.  That doesn't make it right, just ask all the pissed off Tennessee fans.

Signees do matter (and if you don't believe us ask former GT coach Bobby Dodd, he felt so strongly about it that he removed GT from the SEC over "signees").  Otherwise, there would be no restrictions on the number of signees in a class.  Those restrictions were put in place to discourage the practice of "Signing and Placing."  This is something we'll get into on a later date. 

And if signing doesn't count or doesn't matter, then why in the world is there a National Signing Day?  Why not a National Enrollment Day?

Here's a link to a pretty good article that explains things clearly.  We encourage you to read it.

http://blog.al.com/solomon/2010/02/sec_teams_adjust_to_houston_nu.html

"You never see other leagues sign 30-plus guys. You always see it in the SEC," Rivals.com analyst Ja­mie Newberg said. "This was an SEC issue."

"There are fewer sign­and- place kids," Simmons said, referring to the prac­tice of four-year schools placing unqualified signees at junior colleges and prep schools. "Those are the ones that are getting cut out as a result (of the limita­tion)."

"Ole Miss was trying to create a farm league," Lu­ginbill said. "I think what the cap does is make you have to make tougher choices. Before you could say, 'We can get all three of these guys.' Now you say, 'We can fit one in and which one do we want?' "

Nutt even told the media that he knew players wouldn't make it academically but wanted them to go to JUCO in Mississippi and come back to Ole Miss in two years, and that is why the SEC put a limit on the number of signees to a single class at 28.   Again, this sends the wrong message to kids.  The message should be: if you want to play at Ole Miss, you had better have your ducks in a row when you start high school because you are going to need to have the academic chops to succeed in a 4-year institution and developing the tools you will need (such as good study habits, time management, etc.) starts your freshman year of High School, not the last semester of your second year in JUCO.   But that is just our opinion.

Regarding recruits showing up on multiple class lists and "counting twice."  First of all, no one singles out schools and purposely counts the players twice; all numbers are counted the same way for all schools.  There are other schools all around the country who have players who have counted twice and yet they still stay within their roster limitations.  Secondly, the numbers are the numbers.  If a player signs a letter of intent and makes an attempt to get into school, regardless if it's their first time or third time, it counts.   And again, as stated above, this is primarily an SEC issue.

85/25 rule, again.  Just because a team is able to take a signing class of 32 or 29 and narrow it down to 25 doesn't mean they are out of the woods.  And eventually after a few years it catches up with you.  You can't sign and enroll 25 players every year without attrition.  25*4 = 100 which is > 85. 

1 year scholarship vs. 4 year scholarship.  Fury is correct, the NCAA rule is that scholarships are 1-year renewable contracts with the student-athletes.  We see why the NCAA has this rule, but there are really two sides to this coin.   On the one hand, you don't want the NCAA making Universities honor a scholarship to a player who breaks team rules, misses classes and is a detriment to the team, just because he signed a letter of intent; but on the other hand, you don't want to give coaches an out to cut a player that is injury prone or hasn't produced to the level of expectations on the field.  This is where we would like to see Universities and Conference Commissioners step up and fill in the gap between the NCAA rule and a coaches desire to turn over a roster as quickly as possible in order to live up to the expectations that come with being paid a multi-million dollar salary. 

The other aspect of this topic that really bothers us is that all of these coaches have multi-year contracts with massive buyout clauses - if they aren't hacking it on the field and get fired, they still get paid.  What does a player get?  If he's not hacking it he either gets the boot or gets the option to transfer and sit out a year before he can play anywhere else.  That is total BS.

Signing and enrolling.  There is absolutely no reason to sign 32 and enroll 23; Texas, USC, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and several other BCS schools get by without doing that. 

Thanks for the message, Fury.  We appreciate your input and hope that you continue to visit oversigning.com!