Oversigning Recruits

[NDhoosier]

Your right, they may be high, but they are not high enough to excuse Alabama's outrageous numbers. It's easy to win when you have almost an entire extra recruiting class to pick and choose from.

 

[vmgsf]

Congratulations to the number one football factory - Alabama!!!! The undisputed and uncontested - by a wide margin - national champion of oversigning and screwing over high school football players. Nick Saban you are a coaching genius and you have never done anything ILLEGAL.

 

[FinancePhD]

I appreciate what you are trying to do Bishop. You will not change minds but you represent the other side well.

 

[koonja]

Now THAT^ is the definition of a bumped thread, lol.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

I appreciate what you are trying to do Bishop. You will not change minds but you represent the other side well.

"Other side"? You registered with a UA email address from an Alabama IP.

 

[PANDFAN]

"Other side"? You registered with a UA email address from an Alabama IP.

 

[irishog77]

"Other side"? You registered with a UA email address from an Alabama IP.

He's actually Black Dynamite, right? Please tell me he's Black Dynamite.

 

[Me2SouthBend]

He's actually Black Dynamite, right? Please tell me he's Black Dynamite.

Jayrockkkkkkkkk

 

[FinancePhD]

"Other side"? You registered with a UA email address from an Alabama IP.

The other side meaning the non-Big 10 (and in this case non ND view). Southern schools feel it is best to try to get as many kids in college as possible even those that do not have the advantages of parents preparing them for college. I am saying he is doing well in explaining to the people on this site why schools try to offer to so many even though this is such a hostile environment.

I am sorry if you tried to infer that I am on the same side of this issue as many of the posters here. I did not wish to imply such. I simply wished to show support to Bishop for fighting the good fight.

 

[DSully1995]

The other side meaning the non-Big 10 (and in this case non ND view). Southern schools feel it is best to try to get as many kids in college as possible even those that do not have the advantages of parents preparing them for college. I am saying he is doing well in explaining to the people on this site why schools try to offer to so many even though this is such a hostile environment.

I am sorry if you tried to infer that I am on the same side of this issue as many of the posters here. I did not wish to imply such. I simply wished to show support to Bishop for fighting the good fight.

Dude sick name

 

[FinancePhD]

Dude sick name

I am not very clever so I just went with something accurate but not necessarily uniquely identifiable.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

The other side meaning the non-Big 10 (and in this case non ND view). Southern schools feel it is best to try to get as many kids in college as possible even those that do not have the advantages of parents preparing them for college. I am saying he is doing well in explaining to the people on this site why schools try to offer to so many even though this is such a hostile environment.

I am sorry if you tried to infer that I am on the same side of this issue as many of the posters here. I did not wish to imply such. I simply wished to show support to Bishop for fighting the good fight.

Shiit, they should be sainted! Instead of sanctions, we should work on making sure that all these coaches and administrators have a comfortable life, and pray that they have prominent places in heaven! I had no idea until you explained it that way, that these people that we all thought were cheating for their own self interest were actually motivated by there own altruism! Huh, I guess we are the ignorant ones, 'cause our solution would have been to actually force the schools to improve and actually teach them something and prepare them for the world. Wow!

THANKS FOR SETTING US STRAIGHT!

 

[IrishLion]

Wait, you mean to tell me that Alabama signs the equivalent of an extra recruiting class every four years in order to get more kids an education? And not because the scholarships are for a competitive sport? A sport where the underperormers and injured guys get packed up and shipped off to other places to make room for more kids that need educations?

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The other side meaning the non-Big 10 (and in this case non ND view). Southern schools feel it is best to try to get as many kids in college as possible even those that do not have the advantages of parents preparing them for college. I am saying he is doing well in explaining to the people on this site why schools try to offer to so many even though this is such a hostile environment.

Bishop certainly presents a good case.

I am sorry if you tried to infer that I am on the same side of this issue as many of the posters here. I did not wish to imply such. I simply wished to show support to Bishop for fighting the good fight.

I was just surprised to see a 'Bama student refer to a view he's presumably sympathetic to as "the other side". It makes sense now that you've explained it. Carry on.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

Well? Inquiring minds want to know!

 

[FinancePhD]

Shiit, they should be sainted!

I am not Catholic so I don't know how that works. If you say so, okay.

Instead of sanctions, we should work on making sure that all these coaches and administrators have a comfortable life, and pray that they have prominent places in heaven!

They do if you mean the lake.

I had no idea until you explained it that way, that these people that we all thought were cheating for their own self interest were actually motivated by there own altruism!

I do not know why people think they are cheating. People agree that no rules are broken so it cannot be cheating. The question is about the process is immoral or unethical and that would be a question of how it is approaced. If a kid is told that they simply do not have the grades to come in yet but sign an LOI to look cool and the school lets them knowing they will not qualify, according to some that is terrible. To me it is great because that is a big deal to poor kids like me. I personally did not have skills for sports so I had to get my college via the Navy.

It is a case of interests being aligned. That kid that will NQ is then placed in a JuCo to learn study skills and get his grades up and he has a good relationship with a coach so he can transfer back in a couple of years. I am not sure again why it is so bad for a public school to serve a public good by getting more kids in school (albeit at the expense of the wealthier kids paying tuition).

Huh, I guess we are the ignorant ones, 'cause our solution would have been to actually force the schools to improve and actually teach them something and prepare them for the world. Wow!

How is not letting a kid play football making a school in Pensacola improve? I do not follow your logic that this will be the step that improves K-12 education in the inner city or the poor rural areas.

THANKS FOR SETTING US STRAIGHT!

Actually my purpose here was to thank Bishop for trying to do that instead.

The argument around oversigning I have heard is that some kids are forced out early to make room. As far as I know, no one has looked at actual attrition rates to determine how many kids leave a school after coming in on scholarship. The Southern schools do sign a lot more LOI but lose a good number for NQ and MLB draft. They always are at 85 or below when August hits just like the other schools. An SEC or ACC school has a transfer in May and oversigning.com will claim it is a force out to make room when a non-starter at a BiG school has a similar transfer in September and it is no big deal. Assume the worst and I guess you can find the evidence to support what you want to see.

 

[IrishLion]

I think the point was that Alabama does not take part in such practices so that more kids can get educations. Alabama does it because they want to win football games.

 

[FinancePhD]

Wait, you mean to tell me that Alabama signs the equivalent of an extra recruiting class every four years in order to get more kids an education? And not because the scholarships are for a competitive sport? A sport where the underperormers and injured guys get packed up and shipped off to other places to make room for more kids that need educations?

The kids signed often do not show for a couple of years. It is called sign and place where a kid goes through the process and gets to be on TV but then quietly moves to a JuCo for a couple of years. Injured guys generally stay here and that was a complaint that others (such as the WSJ) had. Underperformers have transferred but I know that Alabama lost 12 players over 4 years when Georgia (which is famous for not oversigning) lost 11.

If it is an issue of forcing people out then shouldn't those numbers look different? Not to mention Auburn is listed as a huge oversigner and they are about 20 scholarships below the cap. Sadly people go to sites like oversigning and take those numbers as gospel even though it has been shown that he double counts sign and place and does not remove the non qualified players.

Well? Inquiring minds want to know!

I hope I answered that above. I am very busy so I am not able to monitor the board except during breaks of my coding. As I said before, I am not too clever and SAS is about to drive me mad.

 

[FinancePhD]

I think the point was that Alabama does not take part in such practices so that more kids can get educations. Alabama does it because they want to win football games.

My point is that Alabama does it for both reasons. The interests of the university and the student are aligned.

It is not uncommon for people that can pay to turn down scholarships and walk on here to keep the space open. I do not know how common that is elsewhere.

 

[IrishLion]

My point is that Alabama does it for both reasons. The interests of the university and the student are aligned.

It is not uncommon for people that can pay to turn down scholarships and walk on here to keep the space open. I do not know how common that is elsewhere.

You're delusional if you think Alabama does the "pick and place" so that more kids can get an education. Alabama does the "pick and place" so they can stay at the roster limit and win football games.

If Alabama wants their kids to get an education, that's great. However, the tactic of "pick and place" is not used for anything other than the convenience of the football program. If this were the case, do all other Alabama sports sign players to "scholarships" and send them to JUCO to get an education? Or is it only the football team that cares about creating more educational opportunities?

 

[goldandblue]

My point is that Alabama does it for both reasons. The interests of the university and the student are aligned.

It is not uncommon for people that can pay to turn down scholarships and walk on here to keep the space open. I do not know how common that is elsewhere.

You are totally full of sh!t if you think the University of Alabama or any other school that oversigns recruits is doing it so players can have a chance at succeeding in the classroom.....

 

[Bogtrotter07]

I won't quote anything. Here is is to the point:

I was being facetious. The fact is colleges totally take advantage of major sport athletes athletes. What is a college football players chances of making it on an NFL roster? (32X53) = 1696 divide this by four, (average NFL career) 424. That is 424 down to the sliver catchers; when there are approximately 2,550 coming out of just BCS D1 schools to begin with. The thing colleges owe an athlete at the least is a degree that means something, as in one with an education.

Because of inferior schools, schools that pressure high school officials to cheat and alter grades, because of the way athletes are coddled, and a for a bevy of other reasons athletes are short changed. Anyone who tries to say otherwise, or hide such cheating by schools, or be tongue in cheek in there responses, just comes off as looking stupid.

 

[FinancePhD]

You're delusional if you think Alabama does the "pick and place" so that more kids can get an education. Alabama does the "pick and place" so they can stay at the roster limit and win football games.

If Alabama wants their kids to get an education, that's great. However, the tactic of "pick and place" is not used for anything other than the convenience of the football program. If this were the case, do all other Alabama sports sign players to "scholarships" and send them to JUCO to get an education? Or is it only the football team that cares about creating more educational opportunities?

No some sign and enter the MLB draft instead.

Since the only other sports (baseball and basketball) do not have a requirement to wait to go pro you see it only in football as far as I know. Sign and place is because the kids cannot get into Alabama which honestly means he could not have a shot at getting into Notre Dame (as an example). It did not keep a nose guard or tight end away from another team.

 

[FinancePhD]

I won't quote anything. Here is is to the point:

I was being facetious. The fact is colleges totally take advantage of major sport athletes athletes. What is a college football players chances of making it on an NFL roster? (32X53) = 1696 divide this by four, (average NFL career) 424. That is 424 down to the sliver catchers; when there are approximately 2,550 coming out of just Division One schools to begin with. The thing colleges owe an athlete at the least is a degree that means something, as in one with an education.

Because of inferior schools, schools that pressure high school officials to cheat and alter grades, because of the way athletes are coddled, and a for a bevy of other reasons athletes are short changed. Anyone who tries to say otherwise, or hide such cheating by schools, or be tongue in cheek in there responses, just comes off as looking stupid.

Again the interests are aligned. All of those hot shots that never get to play in the NFL but had time at a school here have opportunites they would have never had otherwise. They get the degree (true some are in degrees that I find to be of poor quality) but often more importantly they have access to the "old boys" network which is what breaks the cycle of poverty. Believe me, I see a world of difference in what I was given by way of college and the vast majority of my high school class.

I cannot to speak to athletes being coddled as my experience is limited to one coach that is quite the opposite. In fact the big criticism from most is that he is too business like and puts huge expectations on their shoulders.

 

[irishog77]

Dude sick name

I am not very clever so I just went with something accurate but not necessarily uniquely identifiable.

Do pronounce it fie-nance or funance (like Pat Haden does)?

 

[FinancePhD]

Do pronounce it fie-nance or funance (like Pat Haden does)?

I have never really thought about it. I guess when I say finance it sounds like I am saying Fine Ants.

Does that help?

 

[IrishSteelhead]

This Finance guy is an ND troll. There is absolutely no way any rational person would believe anything he has posted so far.

Bishop makes a point here and there you can empathize with, this joker is going full retard. Kudos to whoever started this screen name to make Bama fans look stupid.

 

[NOLAIrish]

The other side meaning the non-Big 10 (and in this case non ND view). Southern schools feel it is best to try to get as many kids in college as possible even those that do not have the advantages of parents preparing them for college. I am saying he is doing well in explaining to the people on this site why schools try to offer to so many even though this is such a hostile environment.

I am sorry if you tried to infer that I am on the same side of this issue as many of the posters here. I did not wish to imply such. I simply wished to show support to Bishop for fighting the good fight.

I am not very clever so I just went with something accurate but not necessarily uniquely identifiable.

I would've gone with Pangloss.

The idea that SEC schools are accepting borderline qualifiers out of some altruistic civic-mindedness is absurd. If aiding disadvantaged students through sports scholarships was even vaguely a goal to these programs, they could easily achieve it by taking on inner-city high qualifiers with slightly lesser athletic ability. That's not even a minute part of the model being used here. Putting that off to one side, the qualification standards of the NCAA are pitifully low by design: kids who don't qualify are exactly of the kind that get no benefit from a college education. The whole point of those standards is that it would be a massive disservice to the student to encourage them to attend a 4-year college rather than a trade school or community college or to simply enter the workforce. As such, they're set well below the level at which it is no longer in a students' interest to attend a 4-year college (NCAA Bylaw 14.3, if you're interested in looking at the Q/PQ/NQ tables). Their interests aren't aligned with the school that's admitting them.

I do not know why people think they are cheating. People agree that no rules are broken so it cannot be cheating. The question is about the process is immoral or unethical and that would be a question of how it is approaced. If a kid is told that they simply do not have the grades to come in yet but sign an LOI to look cool and the school lets them knowing they will not qualify, according to some that is terrible. To me it is great because that is a big deal to poor kids like me. I personally did not have skills for sports so I had to get my college via the Navy.

This argument doesn't wash either. But for alternative financing, you would have been denied an education due to your lack of resources. They're being denied an education because of their lack of demonstrable aptitude necessary to benefit from that education. In the former case, there is both a societal and individual good served by bridging the gap. In the latter, there is neither (although, there is a benefit to the football program).

The argument around oversigning I have heard is that some kids are forced out early to make room. As far as I know, no one has looked at actual attrition rates to determine how many kids leave a school after coming in on scholarship. The Southern schools do sign a lot more LOI but lose a good number for NQ and MLB draft. They always are at 85 or below when August hits just like the other schools. An SEC or ACC school has a transfer in May and oversigning.com will claim it is a force out to make room when a non-starter at a BiG school has a similar transfer in September and it is no big deal. Assume the worst and I guess you can find the evidence to support what you want to see.

The scope of the argument against oversigning is broader than simple force-outs, although that is a major problem. It allows teams to massively prioritize athletic ability over classroom ability. It violates the very spirit of student-athletics by creating an environment wherein the students' ability to participate in the classroom is predicated on his level of athletic productivity. Others have brought up other arguments in this thread.

 

[Rack Em]

If you don't feed the troll, it dies.

 

[IrishLax]

So many questions here... and mind you, I'm someone who really likes Bishop and thinks he makes great points... in general, his points are far from bad... but...

1. Why would you get a Ph.D. in finance? And why would you get one from a school like Alabama? Would no banks hire you? Nor consulting firms? Or do you just want to teach for some reason? So many questions.

2. The part about signing non-qualifiers is interesting. There is no denying that there is a competitive advantage to using JUCOs as a farm system which is what this implicitly lets you do. You can stash kids in JUCOs who are top prospects but non-qualifiers and then grab them to fill depth/transfer holes or if they develop into good football players. Schools like Stanford and Notre Dame don't do that... but there's nothing unethical about that approach and I personally wish ND would do it.

3. Here are the quotes I find pretty funny/inaccurate:

They always are at 85 or below when August hits just like the other schools. An SEC or ACC school has a transfer in May and oversigning.com will claim it is a force out to make room when a non-starter at a BiG school has a similar transfer in September and it is no big deal. Assume the worst and I guess you can find the evidence to support what you want to see.

Injured guys generally stay here and that was a complaint that others (such as the WSJ) had. Underperformers have transferred but I know that Alabama lost 12 players over 4 years when Georgia (which is famous for not oversigning) lost 11.

If it is an issue of forcing people out then shouldn't those numbers look different?

This is smooth talk... but fuzzy math. The truth is that Alabama has a medical hardship rate that is so many standard deviations outside the norm that it is a statistical anomaly only explicable by forcing injured/under-performing kids on medical scholarship to make room for other kids. The vast majority of other schools don't employ practices like this (hence Alabama being such an outlier). Citing other SEC schools as empirical counter-examples does nothing to address this. Seeing as you refer to the WSJ article, I don't need to link it to you... and as someone who is presumably a doctoral candidate in a field that at least requires a strong background in statistics I'm sure you understand the concept of standard deviations.

In the above quotes, you seem to suggest that Alabama doesn't push kids into medicals. That's, at best, highly improbable and refuted by first hand anecdotal accounts. Why this matters is that schools attempting to compete with Alabama don't have a JUCO farm system where if a kid qualifies they can add him and drop the underperforming/injured kid... and if he doesn't qualify, keep the underperforming/injured kid and hope he plays better. At Notre Dame we have a QB with no chance of seeing the field who tore his ACL and we keep him on scholarship. Why? Because it's the ethical thing to do not to shove a kid into a choice between transferring or finishing his education. It has been well documented that Alabama pushes the slow gazelles into giving up football to stay at Alabama and get their degree... and this is also supported by their astronomical medical hardship numbers.

Most would consider abusing this rule "cheating" or at least unethical in the same vein that Kiffin switching jersey numbers was cheating/unethical even though the rulebook does not expressly forbid it and instead lists it as an "unethical action."