On the Clock

In a previous post, we responded to Alabama fans that were outraged by our March to 85 piece by giving them a homework assignment.  The assignment was for them to bring us a BCS school that needs to shed more than 6 scholarship commitments between now and August when the NCAA will required that all teams have their rosters down to 85 players.   It took a little bit of time, but we finally had a reader post a list of schools that he claims are over the limit and needs to shed players. 

Here's the list from the Alabama fan:

"You want other programs? Here ya go….

LSU currently has 91 players on scholarship (Need to cut 6)
Miami currently has 91 players on scholarship (Need to cut 6)
Texas A&M currently has 90 players on scholarship (Need to cut 5)
Washington currently has 88 players on scholarship (Need to cut 3)
Nebraska currently has 87 players on scholarship (Need to cut 2)

Texas was at 88 players on scholarship, had 2 transfer, and now needs to cut 1 more."

Okay, so where do we start?  First, let's get a table of the recruiting numbers for each of these schools in one place so we can easily look at them together here.  This is everything from 2002 - 2010; we'll narrow this down to the numbers we need for this investigation a little later in this post.

On The Clock

Done. 

Now, how do we figure out who went over the limit this year by accepting more signed letters of intent then they had room for given the number of scholarship commitments they had on National Signing day?  The math is really simple, but finding the actual roster numbers for the previous year online can be difficult, which is why we are asking you, the fans of these schools, to participate and help us determine if your team went over the limit.  We could do it on our own if all of these teams has a sweet online depth chart application like Notre Dame has available here; make sure you click on Roster Chart when you open the link (side note - if we had any sense at all we would build an application like this to house roster data for all 64 BCS schools and then charge a fee to access it - but as it is we barely have enough time to keep up with blog and our real lives). 

Regardless, we have the number of players signed to each recruiting class (see table above), therefore, all we need now is to know exactly how many players were on scholarship on National Signing Day.  Typically, this is the previous year's total number of scholarship players (which will vary from school to school because not all schools are always at 85 every year) minus graduating seniors with no eligibility left and minus juniors who have declared for the NFL draft by the deadline on January 15th.  We refer to this number as the "recruiting budget."

Until we can get those numbers, let's just look at how many players each school has signed over the last 5 years.  We're going to subtotal 2007 - 2009 and then add 2010 to that number and call it the subtotal for 2007-2010.  We are also going to show you the 2006 numbers, which would represent the 5th year senior classes for these schools.  It is very likely that each of these schools will have a few 5th year guys on their roster.

On The Clock - Numbers for 2006 - 2010

For comparisons sake, now let's look at a few teams that we have investigated in the past and that we know are not over the limit.

Not On The Clock

And then finally, here is Alabama.  Still above those on the clock and way, way above those not on the clock.

Alabama

(Important: It should be noted that the 2007-2010 numbers do not include the 5th year guys from 2006.  Therefore, schools that are under 85 in this column are either short-handed or they have a number of 5th year guys; schools that are way over 85 either have no 5th year guys or they have a few and the numbers are even worse.)

Before everyone gets all up in arms, there is more to this than just these numbers and this is where it gets really time consuming in trying to investigate oversigning.  From 2006 to 2010 a lot of things happen to the rosters, some things are legitimate and some things are not.  The numbers above are the numbers signed; we still need to know who left the team and who still remains from the 2006 class, which will give us the total number of scholarship players at the end of the 2009 season.  From there we can subtract the graduating seniors and early entries into the NFL.  That will give us our recruiting budget for the 2010 class. 

We're not asking that you guys hunt down the back story to every single transfer (although that would be nice), all we really need is the total scholarship commitments at National Signing Day, which is what we described above.  Once we have those numbers we will add the number for the 2010 class and see if it is over 85.

So there it is, we have provided a nice starting point for investing the schools Alabama fans have claimed are also guilty of oversigning players.  Now we just need your help to finish up the investigation.  Please post anything you have here and we'll continue to discuss.