Yes, I really do believe that. That is why kids who are big high school stars in division 1 schools are better prospects and transition much better than big high school stars from division 3 or 4 schools. It is easier to be "the man" amongst lesser competition. You have me all wrong... I am 100% against oversigning and cutting kids.... 100%. The comment of trimming fat was how I feel those coaches look at what they are doing to those kids. Not my outlook. I thought I made my thoughts clear on this subject over the course of this thread. I believe you should recruit the kind of athletes and the kind of people that you want at your university. You then develop them on the football field and off the field preparing them for life after football and college. Not ship them down the road if they dont live up to "your" expectations. So many of you guys like to bust on Ohio State, but they are one of the programs that do things right. They do not oversign, they award scholarships to deserving walkons, are in the top 10 for APR's (academic progress rate), the highest winning percentage over the last 100 years, won the most bcs games, the most top 10 finishes in the bcs era, the only cold weather team that is competitive every year etc etc... People want to complain about all the things some programs do wrong (justified), but than there are programs out there who do things right, Ohio State being one of them, you guys hate on them anyway.
The hatred for OSU has nothing do with them being a clean program. It mostly comes from the perception that they are annually overrated (fair or not) and how they arrogantly boast THE Ohio State University. And please do not lump LSU with USC when discussing athletic probations, LSU's were self-imposed and they fired the assistant responsible as soon as everything came out. LSU's violations were no where close to USC's. OSU has worse violations against them at the moment.
Arrogantly boast "the".... Come on least we don't chant "big 10, big 10, big 10" when one of the conference teams wins a game.... SECer talking about arrogance.... Come on hook.... That is funny. I did not lump LSU with USC. I only listed the the first programs with reduced scholarships to come to mind. OSU does not have any violations against the University, a few players have violations from their actions off of the field and recruiting trail. The actions of the OSU players would not bring sanctions against the program, LSU's would have.
So do I. And, I admittedly mistook your stance (or, didn't recall it). My apologies. Can't speak for anyone else. But, this holds true for me as well. I have nothing against UNC. In fact, the people I know who've graduated from there......I find the least annoying. But, the UNC fan base, here, is what keeps me from being even a casual fan. The Univ. is a fine institution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTTZpeXb044&feature=player_embedded# In the video, Tressel announces to the media that Ohio State had 20 vacancies they could fill with the current recruiting class. That number, no doubt, was based on the number of seniors graduating and the number of juniors leaving for the NFL early, plus any scholarships that were banked from the previous year. Tressel explains that one thing you never want to do is go over the limit but in order to sign everyone they wanted to sign they would have had to sign 30 guys. The limit he is talking about is not the limit of 25 guys per class, he is talking about the 85 limit. It is important to note that he treats signatures as enrolled players. When he says "right now we are at 18" he is referring to having 18 kids signed not 18 kids enrolled. Ironically, one of the kids he signed did not make it into school and that scholarship was given to a deserving walk-on for his senior year. The 19th player he had hoped to sign was Seantrel Henderson. Ohio State did not land Seantrel and since they were not able to sign more than they projected to have room for they couldn't heavily recruit Seantrel and several other top OL prospects for fear of landing more than they would project having room for or having to turn someone away after an offer had been given. Ohio State could have easily pursued 5 OL and found some pour soul(s) to cut on the bottom end of the roster, but that didn't happen and won't happen under Big 10 recruiting rules. Notice there is no mention of medical hardships, grey shirts, cuts, transfers, etc. Notice that he doesn't get upset with the media for asking questions about his numbers, in fact he is as transparent as the NCAA will allow him to be with regards to roster management. Let's compare that to Nick Saban's current recruiting class, ranked #1 in the country. Saban has roughly 8 scholarship seniors and he announced this week that 3 Juniors are leaving early for the NFL. That is roughly 11 scholarship openings. Let's be generous and say there are 15 openings. His class right now has 22 verbal commitments plus two players that accepted a grey shirt offer from last year and are expected to enroll this year. That makes 24 total scholarship commitments this year and only 15 at most openings. There was no room to back count players to last year's class so everyone is going to count towards this year. But Nick Saban is not finished recruiting yet. National Signing Day has not arrived and Nick Saban is still pursuing recruits such as #1 ranked DE Clowney. Defenders of Saban's recruiting practices and even Saban himself will probably tell you that they have a plan and that everything is on the up and up with the NCAA. What they won't tell you is that his plan is to exploit every known loophole in the NCAA rule book for recruiting. Players will be moved to medical hardships, transferred, or asked to greyshirt in order to make room to get down to 85, room he didn't have when he accepted their signed letter of intent. There is something drastically wrong when a coach like Jim Tressel has 1 greyshirt and maybe 2 medical hardships in 10 years at Ohio State and Nick Saban has 12 medical hardships in 4 years and is looking at giving out 10 greyshirt offers this year. It's a problem and it's real. And LSU is no different - it's not just Alabama.
Yet the kids keep signing with these evil SEC schools. Nobody can force these kids to sign with Alabama or LSU. They are all quite aware of the number of scholarships and who is on the roster. This "we're better than that" attitude from OSU fans is quite annoying. You cannot tell me that if Seantrel Henderson, or any top level recruit seriously wanted to commit to OSU, that they would turn them down because they had already met their commitment number. Don't be so naive.
I don't think we will ever agree with this oversigning issue. However, can we all agree that every major college football program (yes ever your precious OSU) is cheating or bending the rules? Most just have yet to be caught.
If it annoys you it must be because you know deep down that what some of these programs are doing is wrong. They would not have had to turn Henderson down, they saved a scholarship past signing day because his offer was on the table. Once he chose USC that scholarship was given to a walk on senior.
I will state this, I hate TSIO, but Tressel does not or will not cheat. One of the reason RR was fired at MI because he got busted cheating.
I pretty sure he got hit with some serious violations while at Youngstown St. Oh...and remember Maurice Clarrett? I'm pretty sure OSU got hit with sanctions because of some recruiting violations with him.
Clarrett was recruited by my favorite coach at TSIO, Cooper Tressel has gone out of his way to help Clarret also, who is back in school. Cheating at 1AA schoolLOL OK I believe SEC schools doing it right also, just not one for sure
