SEC Coaches and Oversigning Update

Oversigning is a nasty word in the college football circle and it is a word that was one of the focal points of the SEC Coaches meeting this past week in Destin, Fl.  It appears some common ground was reached by the SEC on this issue and a few others that are highlighted below –

1. The SEC is moving forward with banning the graduate school exemption for players with only a year of eligibility left. That keeps SEC schools from participating in the senior year free agency market like the Russell Wilson ordeal this year.
2. More conference oversight of medical exemption scholarships.
3. Restricting number of signees to 25 per year. The coaches were unanimously against this, but the presidents were unanimously for it. No longer is it 28.
4. Summer school attendees will count towards that fall’s scholarship numbers.  Moves roster management choices up.
5. Jeff Schultz: “The SEC, as the highest-profile college football conference in the nation, had a chance to make a loud statement at its meetings this week. It kind of wimped out.”
6. Andy Staples: “Hopefully, the SEC will remain the only league dumb enough to wipe from the books the only rule in the NCAA that actually provides a positive incentive for athletes.”
7. Conference eliminates non-scholastic 7-on-7 camps.  This was a good move as that whole game was becoming dirty.
8. SEC makes bank….Revenue increased 5.3 percent. The SEC made more money than ever before. 

On the oversigning issue, our blogging pal TeamSpeedKills made a valid point, below, that highlights that the oversigning issue was not fully addressed.  Here is what he wrote:

There are two ways a team can oversign. The first one, addressed by the conference rules today, is to sign more than 25 players to letters of intent in a given year. The roster is eventually culled through academic casualties, grayshirting, etc., until the number magically lands at 25 by the time everyone is enrolled.

But the other method for oversigning — which the SEC only partially addressed today — comes from a quirk in the NCAA rules. Schools are only allowed to have 85 players on football scholarships at any one time, despite the annual limit of 25. Even journalism majors can probably figure out the inherent math problem here: 4 X 25 = 100. (And that doesn’t account for redshirting players.) So if a school has all 85 players, loses 15 in a given year and then signs 25, they’ve got ten students too many (85 – 15 + 25 = 95) and somebody’s got to go.

So as you can see, there is still work to be done on the issue and it will not be truly cured until the NCAA puts its’ stamp on this issue.  Will they?  Who knows but do expect coaches to have to do “roster management” each year to get the team set at 85.  Let the discussion continue on this subject and it may not be ‘oversigning’ that is the dirty word anymore but ‘roster management.’