Spring Practice - Effect of Scholarship Sanctions
Spring Practice - Effect of Scholarship Sanctions
Restricted to no more than seventy-five total scholarships for the last three years, there's been little margin for error in recruiting. With less depth, less freshmen redshirted and, when total scholarship numbers dipped below seventy-five, USC gave walkons scholarships.
Last year for a couple away games USC suited up forty-eight scholarship players and fifty-three for a home game. USC does not have the luxury of exceptions to recruiting limits that SEC teams do. In the SEC, class size can exceed twenty-five if the total scholarships would fall below eighty-five. USC is limited to twenty-five a year, which they signed last year (one blueshirt from previous year counted towards 2015).
Where does that leave them? After losing two players in-season in 2014, they had sixty-seven scholarship players. Twelve were lost to graduation and four were early entrants to the NFL draft. Spring practice has them with fifty-one scholarship players from last year with an additional six early enrollees. With nine players with injuries that have kept them out of spring practice and one suspended, USC is finishing spring practice with forty-seven scholarship players, which includes two walkons given scholarships.
When the entire 2015 class enrolls in the fall, USC will have seventy-five scholarship players before handing out any further walkon scholarships. This year, USC has sixteen Seniors without any eligibility left. Assuming only three players lost through attrition next year and assuming another twenty-five in the Class of 2016, next year USC will be up to eighty-one scholarship players. Only after the Class of 2017 will USC be again at eighty-five scholarship players.