Oversigning (capacity 25, everyone welcome! maybe)

[Gatorubet]

That the SEC schools benefit more than the ACC schools has to do with the fact that the SEC schools are operating at a higher level of football/recruiting to begin with AND are bringing in athletes that many ACC schools wouldn't touch. The ACC's struggles don't negate the advantage of oversigning. In fact, it can be argued that they'd be even worse without the practice.

Ord, I did not invent cause and effect. Blame Mr. Pearson for correlation and dependence and standard deviation. No matter how Josh spins the fact that it makes zero difference how much you oversign within conference as a predictor of success, when you look at the programs that oversign and those who don't you see absolutely no positive impact on the win-loss table. So I refuse to blindly accept the fact that the reason the SEC is kicking ass and taking names in the BCS bowls, and a significant reason that the poor souls who get their asses kicked were kicked, is because the evil SEC cheated their way to another win via oversigning.

To those of you who are arguing that we can disregard the amount of oversigning that non-successful conferences do, and that oversigning is only a significant and effective when the SEC does it, you need to explain to me why that is an acceptable working hypothesis.

 

[billmac91]

Ord, I did not invent cause and effect. Blame Mr. Pearson for correlation and dependence and standard deviation. No matter how Josh spins the fact that it makes zero difference how much you oversign within conference as a predictor of success, when you look at the programs that oversign and those who don't you see absolutely no positive impact on the win-loss table. So I refuse to blindly accept the fact that the reason the SEC is kicking ass and taking names in the BCS bowls, and a significant reason that the poor souls who get their asses kicked were kicked, is because the evil SEC cheated their way to another win via oversigning.

To those of you who are arguing that we can disregard the amount of oversigning that non-successful conferences do, and that oversigning is only a significant and effective when the SEC does it, you need to explain to me why that is an acceptable working hypothesis.

Because if you gave Al Davis 5 extra draft picks a year, he'd still F it up.

If you gave Bill Bellichek 5 extra draft picks a year, it's just the rich getting richer.

 

[Gatorubet]

Well, break it down then.

Come up with the numbers per school, per class and we'll figure it out.

Well, oversigning.com has the signings for teams going back to 2002. Pretty easy to check. According to them, Auburn, in the last 4 years, has signed: 30, 29, 28, 32. That's 119 scholarships not including redshirts from the year before. That's 34 kids that are not going to have scholarships that thought they were. It's just like that at most SEC schools. I find it incredibly hard to believe that 8.4 kids per year aren't qualifying, or are getting so badly hurt so as to need a medical hardship scholarship, or just plain aren't pulling their weight.

http://oversigning.com/testing/index.php/recruiting-numbers/

Bull [Mark May]. Utter bull [Mark May]. Your thinking assumes that every one of the LOI signees were qualified, and that the number of spots among the present team would remain constant. You assume there were no academic casualties among them (either within the recruiting class or the team itself.) You statement fails to account for guys getting hurt, guys going pro, guys leaving the program, guys being dismissed for cause for criminal or discipline problems, etc.

I understand that you "find it hard to believe". But somebody, somewhere, should have those stats. And it will go your way and reveal a huge amount of kids launched for no reason but to better the SEC teams, or you will find that after all is said and done it is not that big a deal.

But we do not know. So it is fine to have an opinion, and fine to have a working hypothesis, but do not expect everyone to adopt that as truth when not only is the basic assumption about the number of kids replaced in SEC squad not proven, but the general assumption that oversigning lead to success is actually disproved - if the statistics on who does it and the results of that practice as success in the win loss column are correct.

To be honest, it sounds like looking for excuses to explain why the SEC has been so successful to the detriment of other conferences, including your own. And that, of course, is just my homer SEC opinion. I grant you that I am not unbiased.

 

[Gatorubet]

Because if you gave Al Davis 5 extra draft picks a year, he'd still F it up.

So all other conferences but the SEC are Al Davis and only the SEC is Bill Bellichek?

Well..........Thank You. I guess.

 

[billmac91]

Post #428...

from an Alabama sight.

It's pretty laughable.

 

[billmac91]

So all other conferences but the SEC are Al Davis and only the SEC is Bill Bellichek?

Well..........Thank You. I guess.

A better comparison may have been if you give the Oakland Raiders 5 extra picks and New England 5 extra picks because organizationally New England is that much stronger.

The SEC is a talent-rich part of the country with great programs. Nobody is disputing that. Give a conference with that much talent even more of an advantage (an extra recruting class every 4 years) and yes it is very difficult to make up that gap.

Nobody is scared of Iowa St oversigning. The NCAA could lift the 85 scholarship limit for Iowa St and it'd mean very little. Because they suck and aren't starting with the same deck anyways.

Give an LSU, Bama, or Auburn an additional advantage and it pays huge dividends.

 

[jwinslow]

I understand that you "find it hard to believe". But somebody, somewhere, should have those stats. And it will go your way and reveal a huge amount of kids launched for no reason but to better the SEC teams, or you will find that after all is said and done it is not that big a deal.

And you continue to rule out almost every way of "launching" a kid and then demanding that we show you what kids were launched.

 

[jwinslow]

Ord, I did not invent cause and effect. Blame Mr. Pearson for correlation and dependence and standard deviation. No matter how Josh spins the fact that it makes zero difference how much you oversign within conference as a predictor of success, when you look at the programs that oversign and those who don't you see absolutely no positive impact on the win-loss table.

Unless we look within the SEC conference as a predictor of success (and even then it's a pretty tiny sample size), the ONLY conference with more than two powerhouse draws in recruiting.

So I refuse to blindly accept the fact that the reason the SEC is kicking ass and taking names in the BCS bowls, and a significant reason that the poor souls who get their asses kicked were kicked, is because the evil SEC cheated their way to another win via oversigning.

It's not. It's one of many, including coaching, tradition, recruiting, facilities, boosters, fans, etc.

To those of you who are arguing that we can disregard the amount of oversigning that non-successful conferences do, and that oversigning is only a significant and effective when the SEC does it, you need to explain to me why that is an acceptable working hypothesis.

Funny, because I find your rebuttal hypothesis to be completely illogical.'

If Variable O has any impact, then the resulting data will be arranged based on that one variable. Since it is not, variable O must not have an effect.

The reality is there are many factors at play here, most of which make it embarrassing to use Iowa State vs Texas as a rebuttal without laughing during it.

 

[Jaxbuck]

Then you missed it. That's not my fault.

Obviously I did miss it.

Care to give it to me again?

The reason, other than to gain a competitive advantage at the expense of student athletes, the SEC is so far out in front of everyone else in oversigning is _____.

 

[jwinslow]

Post #428...

from an Alabama sight.

It's pretty laughable.

Still waiting for Gator to deal with that (and to be fair, he was largely AWOL this weekend).

That's the source of this outrage. If it were just Florida bringing in a lot of kids while having a lot of kids go pro or get sent packing for behavior/grades, it would be a lot different. I haven't seen many blogs revealing the ten guys Urban Meyer has to cut every spring like Saban does annually.

 

[jwinslow]

Gator, is it your stance that Saban is not engaging in shady practices with regards to oversigning & medical redshirt claims?

Post #428 by billmac - breakdown of how Bama cuts each year

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2010/09/castoffs_who_accepted_medical.html

running back Jeramie Griffin -- who said he was surprised last month when he was told he had failed a physical but accepted the news and the medical scholarship, plus an offer to help the team as a student coach.
"I felt like I could have played," Griffin said.

Here is an excerpt from the story, which appears online under the headline "Alabama's unhappy castoffs":

"I'm still kind of bitter," said former Alabama linebacker Chuck Kirschman, who took a medical scholarship last year. Mr. Kirschman said Mr. (Nick) Saban encouraged him to accept the scholarship because of a back problem that he believes he could have played through. "It's a business," Mr. Kirschman said. "College football is all about politics. And this is a loophole in the system."

And another excerpt:

"I wasn't playing significant minutes, but I was personally upset because I did anything coach asked, I was a team player, I had a 4.0 average," said Mr. Kirschman, who played in two career games, both in 2008, and is now working full time as a robot programmer at Mercedes.

Mr. Kirschman said the school offered in the summer of 2009 to pay for his graduate degree in business--an offer he accepted--and that he still gets some of the same perks as players. "I still get game tickets, which is nice," he says.

Mr. Kirschman said the decision to take the medical scholarship was ultimately his, and that he decided to do it to open up a scholarship for the good of the team. But he said he felt he was pressured. "It was pushed," he said. "It was instigated for several players."

The newspaper reports that since Saban became the head coach in 2007, at least 12 players have been offered medical scholarships.
Including Alabama, the 12 Southeastern Conference schools have given at least 25 medical scholarships to football players in the past three years, the newspaper reports.

Having as many medical scholarships as 11 other teams is extremely shady.

now the source of the above quotes:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703384204575509901468451306.html

In August 2009, Jeramie Griffin, a redshirt sophomore running back at Alabama, tore an anterior cruciate ligament in his knee during a practice—an injury that kept him out for that season. After undergoing surgery, he said, "I came back in the spring and I was OK."

Indeed, Mr. Griffin's bio on Alabama's official athletics website said he "looked strong in 2010 spring drills, just eight months off of surgery."

Mr. Griffin said that he was surprised last month when the football staff told him he had failed a physical. At that point, Mr. Griffin said, Mr. Saban sat him down and asked him what he wanted to do besides playing football. He said that Mr. Saban floated the possibility of a medical scholarship and asked if Mr. Griffin was interested in student coaching.

Mr. Griffin said he doesn't contest the results of the physical and said it was "basically my decision" to forgo the rest of his playing career.

Mr. Griffin said he has agreed to take a job as a student coach. He added that he felt less angry about being pushed to take the medical scholarship—which frees up roster space for the team—than he did about not living up to his potential.

"I felt like I could have played," he said.

 

[Gatorubet]

But what I'm becoming ever more unconvinced of, is that programs are "jettisoning" kids on the scale that appears to be the conventional wisdom here.

There are a few anecdotal stories where it's happened, but to hear you guys tell it, virtually every program in the SEC is giving 10 or 12 kids the boot each and every year. I can't find any evidence that is so.

This

 

[jwinslow]

Again, let's discuss Bama. There's quite a wide gulf between Bama and Florida from what we've seen, whereas LSU seems to be closer to the former.

What is your reaction to these articles and breakdowns?

 

[Gatorubet]

Weighing in:

Oversigning is an awfully broad term. It can be as innocent as a minor gamble on some players you're certain will transfer or as malicious as amassing LOIs and working out the details later. I liken this to the issue with partial and non-qualifiers that plagued the Big XII. Enough people got grumpy about what they perceived to be abuse of the system or loopholes that the NCAA was forced to tighten the rules. Is oversigning within the current rules? Yes, it is. Are there cases where it is morally or ethically wrong? I think so. In general, I think most would find it offensive what is happening to some of these kids if given all of the facts. I know I would be [censored]ed if my child went through the following: had a scholarship offer to LSU, Wake Forest, and Mississippi State. Took the offer to LSU. After a redshirt, and a season without a lot of playing time, he gets jettisoned from the team to make room for another player. The coaches publicly say he didn't have the fight or determination to compete at the college level but I know it is bull[Mark May]. He would have been at least a 3 year starter at Wake Forest and would have gotten one hell of a degree but he gambled on a chance to go pro and now we're left with division II ball. That is the kind of thing that if parents and athletes knew going in to this they may reconsider some of these SEC schools that habitually adopt the motto: "win at all costs," even if it means dragging kids through the mud and ruining their careers. If the rule allows for even the slightest slime ball maneuvering it is a bad rule and needs to be tightened. Fans trash kids when they go back on a LOI or transfer but don't feel their school should be held equally accountable if they go against their agreement with the kid? This is a double standard. Is oversigning the catalyst for this behavior? Probably not, but it is the loophole that allows it to happen. The true root cause of this is college football programs viewing their student athletes as disposable and simply as tools to succeed. Not as people and not as students.

In terms of competitive advantage, it certainly does provide some level of advantage. Simply from a statistical standpoint it does. It is hard to judge how significant or minute that advantage is and it would definitely be circumstantial--but one exists. It is probably less of an advantage than monstrous athletic budgets, state-of-the-art facilities, and a campus that is equaled by very few. But it is still an advantage. What's more, the former aren't viewed to be ethically or morally questionable by many if any at all.

Conclusion:

Are all that oversign bad guys? No. I think there are some teams that have had a lot of success gambling in the oversigning game and haven't had to break any moral or ethical obligations to kids on scholarship. Are the few that abuse the opening in NCAA rules that allows oversigning? Yes, and in many cases those same programs are engaged in conduct that is just wrong when it comes to obligations they have to these kids. For that reason something needs to happen.

Great f-ing post. Further, I would support any additional rules that clarify the - discretion - of a coach like Saban to utilize the rules in a way deemed an advantage, without the flexibility to respond to the unforeseen problem that comes up.

BTW, if Saban between 2007 and 2010 used as many medical launches as the rest of the SEC combined, then all of you who asserted that "all the SEC programs do it" can feel free to admit you were wrong. :p

 

[Deety]

BTW, if Saban between 2007 and 2010 used as many medical launches as the rest of the SEC combined, then all of you who asserted that "all the SEC programs do it" can feel free to admit you were wrong. :p

Wait - there are individual programs in the SEC?