The Big 10 Legalizes Oversigning

Maybe legalizes was a strong word, it's more like they made a slight rule change back in 2002, but stick with us, this gets pretty interesting.  We have already covered the history of oversigning in the conference that has the worst problem with it, the SEC.  Now we are starting to dig around and look at the history of oversigning in other conferences.

Recently, we found an article on Penn State's Collegian website from back in 2002, which we found extremely interesting. 

"According to Scott Chipman, Big Ten associate director of communications, the Big Ten has passed a ruling to allow teams to "oversign" on national signing day. Starting next season, teams will be able to sign more players to scholarship than were lost the previous season to graduation, which they are not currently allowed to do. Chipman said that the rule has been passed, but is still in the legislative process. The Big Ten released no further comment, and Chipman would not explain the workings of the legislative process."

"The cause was championed by Indiana coach Gerry DiNardo, who is in his first year at the helm for the Hoosiers. DiNardo spent four years as the head coach at Vanderbilt and five in the same position at Louisiana State, where he was able to oversign players. DiNardo and his staff introduced the legislation, and DiNardo lobbied faculty representatives."

"There's no way in most universities that you can manage your roster to be at 85 scholarships if you're not permitted to oversign and allow for no attrition," he said. "I don't know any program that has no attrition from the first Wednesday in February until the day freshman report. I think that creates a competitive disadvantage for the Big Ten as a whole in interconference play."

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2002/10/10-23-02tdc/10-23-02dsports-03.asp

The article delves further into the topic and we'll get into that after the jump. 

Click the link to continue reading >>>

Regardless, the actual ruling that passed goes like this:

"Starting with the upcoming 2002/03 recruiting class, Big Ten schools are allowed to sign three over the NCAA-maximum 25/85 kids to scholarships, although the numbers must be within the allowable limits by the start of fall two-a-days."

http://michigan.scout.com/a.z?s=162&p=2&c=72145&ssf=1&RequestedURL=http%3a%2f%2fmichigan.scout.com%2f2%2f72145.html

"When the Big Ten made the change in 2002, it instituted a policy where teams could oversign by no more than three players, and DiNardo said a detailed explanation behind the oversigning had to be submitted to the Big Ten."

http://www.cleveland.com/osu/index.ssf/2008/01/stricter_scholarship_rules_put.html

Before we go any further, let's examine what we have quoted thus far.  The original article states that a rule change, spear-headed by Gerry DiNardo, would allow Big 10 teams to "oversign" players, but when you look at the second follow up article, you can see that the actual rule that passed only enabled Big 10 coaches to sign an additional 3 players over the 25 limit. 

In addition, before a coach was able to get approval for the additional 3 players he had to prove that there was room for those 3 players under the 85 max rule.  Here is how the numbers would have to work, first, there had to be no more than 57 players returning on scholarship, add 25 for the current class, which brings you to 82, then you can petition the Big 10 office to get 3 additional scholarships which would put you at 85.  Everyone has to qualify and more importantly, no one gets forced out.   Now compare that to what Saban has done at Alabama by having 66 returning players on scholarship and still signing 29 new recruits, thus putting him at 95 (10 over the limit).  It's pretty easy to see the difference in philosophy between the two. 

Interesting data:  if you look at the 99 recruiting classes (2002-2010 = 9 years * 11 teams) only 3 times have schools gone to the limit of 28, twice have they gone over with Michigan State at 31 in 2004 and Minnesota at 29 in 2008, and only 18 times have schools gone over 25. 

The net result of this rule change was a total of 37 additional players (or 1 Huston Nutt recruiting class) being signed over a 9 year period; divide those 37 players by the total number of recruiting classes 99 and it is a net result of .373 players per school, per class.  So basically, the rule did what it was designed to do, which was to give schools an occasional opportunity to fill a legitimate void in their roster and do it without forcing kids out; it was not designed to open the flood gates and allow schools in the Big 10 to start signing 28 players a year every year.

Conference Comparisons 2002 - 2010

Back to the original article:

"Other coaches also expressed their agreement with the ruling on yesterday's Big Ten teleconference."

"I think it's a positive change from the standpoint of being able to be on the same playing field with a lot of the teams in other conferences," Michigan coach Lloyd Carr said. "Especially when you look at our bowl hookup with the SEC in the Citrus and Outback Bowl, it's an important rule. I can remember going to bowl games with 77, 76 guys on scholarship against a team with 85 ... In bowl games against conferences that have an advantage of doing that, Big Ten teams were at a severe disadvantage."

It's pretty clear that the Big 10 was at a disadvantage.  First you have a former SEC coach in his first year in the Big 10 and he is lobbying for rule changes because right off the bat he notices a huge difference in the recruiting practices between the two conferences, second you have Michigan head coach, Lloyd Carr, openly claim the rule differences were putting the Big 10 at a disadvantage.  Those are their words, not something we made up.

Final Analysis:  Despite the rule change in 2002 which allowed Big 10 teams to start taking an additional 3 players over the 25 limit to help address the shortfall some schools were experiencing and to help schools get closer to 85 scholarship players each year without ever giving out more scholarship offers than they have room for, the data we have collected shows that there is still a huge gap between the Big 10 and the SEC with regards to recruiting numbers.  No where is this more evident than when you compare Auburn to Northwestern.  The numbers difference is staggering.  There is more still to uncover regarding the Big 10 conference and recruiting numbers, but based on the articles above it is pretty clear that the conference has taken a hard stance against oversigning and only recently relaxed the rules in an effort to bridge the gap between how it operates and how other conferences operate.