The Junkyard

Thanks G. Knowledge is power!

This raises another question for me. What about players who have red shirted earlier and yet play through their Senior season? Is that scholarship available if they have graduated but still have a season left? For example, we have a wr on this team who red shirted and will graduate in May. He will be a senior next season on the team but will have already graduated from UGA. Is he still a scholarship player or not?

If you only count players that originally came in on scholarship, we will have 23 spots open next year not counting any juniors leavig early. if Jarvis, Alec, and Kwame leave early that puts us at 26 open scholarships. We average 6-8 in attrtion each year. Let's say we lose 10 over the next 18 months, which is a normal amount of attrition for that amount of time (including the NFL early departures). That puts us at likely having 33 open spots when it counts(not on NSD).

We can only count back scholarships that were open the previous season for EEs. Last year we only used 83 scholarships after we gave 8 walkons scholarships, so only 2 of our 3 EEs back count. So we can technically take up to 33 including 8 EEs, and every walk on that gets a scholarship takes away from that number. There is no limit of 3 EEs per year.. I've seen that but apparently that isn't the case.

I found this very informative. I had been wondering how bama was able to pull off 8 EE's when the limit was 3. So how many would we be able to back date for this coming year? With only 19 signees this year, I would think that it will be more than 3.

You honestly think Saban doesn't understand the new rules with recruiting? Seriously?

It still appears to me that there are so many exceptions, that the rules can be manipulated anyway you want almost. In order for the new requirement to have any affect, you will have to throw in hard and fast rules concerning how you get rid of a athlete not living up to the standards the coach wants on the playing field. They just need to make it a hard number and be done with it. I would think 25 is a good base, and sign three that count from the previous year. Hold the overall total to 85, and then all this crap about over signing would be done and over with. If you were going to have an exception to that number, it would have to be if a player was permanently disqualified due to injury. If a kid flunks out due to academics or misconduct, that's a lick on you, and you just carry on. Maybe then, you might even be able to say student and athlete in the same sentence without laughing most of the time. The big 10 is even trying to institute a rule that requires the kid to be offered a minimum of a 3 year minimum scholarship, and I think that has it's merits as well. Then you might see actual student athletes, but with all the tutoring and special admits and such, not a whole lot more. What the big 10's rule will most likely do is prevent some borderline academic kid, with great athletic skills end up either missing out, or go to a JUCO to get his grades up. With a 3 year scholarship minimum coaches just couldn't throw out scholarships anymore to tweeners, because they would have to allow him to be in school at least 3 years, tying up their scholarship.
It really doesn't matter what the NCAA, SEC, big 10, or any other conferences does, some coaches will strill figure out a way to get around it. In the end the kids are going to be the victim of some of the practices by certain coaches. Some where along the road, more consideration has got to be given to the young kid and pulling in the coaches that continue to stretch the rules and look for every little loop hole they can use.

There IS a "hard" signing limit of 28 now, in the SEC. The article doesn't say anything about it, but previous articles from the time of the conference meetings last spring pointed it out.

That rule was about signing more than 28, qualifying or not, in one year. It was intended to stop the signing and placing like Ole Miss was doing when they signed 37 kids one year and a lot of them were just sign and place kids. The previous rules only dealt with how many you enroll. That 28 rule still didn't prevent back counting, which is how UGA could still sign as many as 33 this class, because only 25 of those would be counted on the 2013 class and 8 would be counted on the 2012 class along with the 17 original signees.