I've been on a kick reading about the problem of oversigning, particularly in the SEC. Dawg Sports had a couple of their authors propose a couple different solutions to oversigning that were both interesting. But I found two things much more interesting.
The first was this CBSSports.com article by Gregg Doyle, who came out with guns blazing.
LSU football coach Les Miles is a bad guy -- literally, a subspecies of human being -- but make no mistake about this: I'm not calling him a cheater. Miles is a bad guy, but he's a bad guy with the official approval of the NCAA.
I wonder if Miles slept with his wife or maybe they went to elementary school together and Miles was a bully. I don't know but that was pretty harsh.
Next was some in depth research by Oversigning.com. This is the place to go to get caught up on what oversigning is, how it bad for the NCAA and how the SEC exploits it like no other conference. The following table is recruiting classes between the years 2002 and 2010...
| Comparisons | SEC | Big10 | Big12 | BigEast | Pac10 | ACC |
| # of Times Over 25 in Single Class: | 54 | 18 | 37 | 23 | 28 | 22 |
| # of Times 28 or More in Single Class: | 33 | 5 | 24 | 14 | 14 | 10 |
| # of Back to Back Classes of 25 or More: | 35 | 6 | 24 | 11 | 8 | 5 |
Note how many more times an SEC schools has signed over the 25 scholarship max compared to the Big Ten. That difference is incredible. This isn't because the SEC coaches have figured something out that the BigTen coaches haven't, it's that the Big Ten frowns on this behavior and it's coaches generally abide by this rule.
In the Big 10 conference, coaches are encouraged to establish their recruiting budget (number of openings for new signees) ahead of National Signing Day and stay within those limits; Big 10 coaches are allowed to sign up to 28 players to a single class, but they are required to petition the Big 10 office and prove that they have room for the 3 extra players and that signing the 3 extra players will not results in the removal of anyone currently on the roster with eligibility remaining. They are also not allowed to accept a signed letter of intent for numbers 26, 27, and 28 until they receive permission from the Big 10 office and it is our understanding that the Big 10 office reviews the roster in question to make sure that there is room for those players before giving the coaches permission to accept those LOI.
Interesting.
- The RivalryEsq has gone through a rebranding and they are not OffTackleEmpire (I assume you can refer to them as OTE). Last week Jeremy posted an article on TCF Bank Stadium.
- A Hawk's Eye View predicts an 11th place finish for the Gophers this year. Not surprising as everyone is.
- Check out Hoop Vision, a new college hoops blog that will be pretty heavy with tempo-free stats.
- Finally, we have a new softball coach! Jessica Allister is a Pac-10 girl who played at Stanford and most recently was an assistant at Oregon. She has her work cut out for her.
- Lastly, LetsPlayHockey has a state of the Gopher program story. Certainly a great read for the hockey fans amongst us.