No one wants a player to be offered a scholly, only to lose it because they couldn’t be fit in a given class somehow. But a cap like that forgets the other side of the issue too – these players are getting free rides to major universities, and though playing is what they come for, a free education is nothing to sneeze at. Saban signed 32 players, and was able to fit all of them in – yeah, maybe they didn’t play for a year or two, but they’ll get their four years if they work hard, produce on the field and keep their grades up, and in the meantime, they are getting a stinkin’ good education on someone else’s dime. Are we going to now deny kids that opportunity because, horror of horrors, there is a microscopic chance that someone might get messed up by the system? Slive said it only happened once in his seven years – okay, how many players did it not happen to? With each team having 85 scholarship players per year, in the SEC that’s 1,020 players to come through the SEC each year alone. In seven years, one out of 7,140 players got cheated out of what he should have had. I’d like to crunch the numbers on all other forms of getting scholarships and see if they have better track records. This is completely unnecessary, and will only serve to lessen the level of talent that comes into the SEC.

… I still really do not see where this is an issue. I mean yes you do see someone like Nutt signing an ungodly massive class, but I have yet to see an example of a kid who signed, who is academically qualified, that was turned away because the school in question signed too many people.

In reality, all these big classes usually mean is that the class is full of academic casualties. That doesn’t mean anyone is going to get left out in the cold, it just means that a lot of the signees are headed to JUCO or a prep school. By adding a rule like this, I think all you would do is really eliminate the chances of kids with poor academics getting signed. With that rule in place, you wouldn’t have the room to oversign in other areas to compensate for the possibility that that player does not qualify.

And at any rate, speaking of our 2008 class, it really wasn’t that big. We signed 31 guys total, but when you factor out by the Bryant scholarship and a couple of early enroll guys, we were literally only about two or three players above 25, so that wasn’t even a particularly big class.

for this rule. It sounds like a rule that would limit the depth of talent in the SEC more than anything… Sounds like Slive might be getting some kind of kick back from other conferences. I highly doubt it but its the only reason I see to have this rule! I dont care how many kids someone signs. I say, if the kids want to come, let em! By the way, how many kids did Coach Bryant sign each year?

won’t this policy create a hierarchy of the “haves” by making it almost impossible for the “have nots” to bolster their roster with recruiting talent to kick start their programs?

…that the reason the SEC is ‘considering’ supporting the legislation is mainly to send a message to coaches to not get too Nutt-y in their recruiting practices. And maybe to say: Houston, you have a problem.

http://www.tidesports.com/article/20090528/NEWS/905279941/1067/NEWS?Title=CECIL-HURT-Cap-on-over-signing-would-change-approach-to-recruiting

can’t help but think Slive is playing politician here. Going out in public and waggin his finger with threats exercising his authority on a certain issue. But if anything substantive comes of it I’ll be suprised.