Tressel-gate = Zero Impact on SEC
By Lake The Posts on
Man, are we foolish. The LTP poll on the Ohio State mess potentially offering a turning point towards a more even playing field to benefit Northwestern seemed like ‘Cats fans were borderline optimistic. Well, it took a whole four days for the SEC to prove “not so fast, my friend”.
Happy Saturday everyone. I’m sure you’ve got Northwestern Day at Arlington Park on your to-do list today so bring the sharpies and swag for Fitz, Carmody and Kelly Amonte-Hiller to the track to get your autographs. While you’re there, I challenge you to ask Fitz about one thing – oversigning. I’m pretty sure he’ll engage you in a candid conversation.
I’ve been holding on this topic until later in the summer, but the SEC’s joke of a PR stunt yesterday forced me to go there – on a weekend (aka low readership time slot) no less. For those who haven’t heard, “oversigning” is the shadiest recruiting tactic this side of paying off players or giving them cars. Actually, many might consider it worse. Certain schools – and nearly every program in the SEC offer more scholarships and then accept more formal commitments than there are slots. For example, let’s say Alabama has 25 scholarships for the 2011 class to give within the 85 scholarship per team total limit that is the NCAA rule. The Crimson Tide would get 29 commitments on the books as they keep saying “yes” to kids, especially the ones that are better players. It’s a shell game – once the commitments are all in, then, the games begin. The less-than-best of the 29 start getting BS excuses from the Tide on why they can’t take the kid. Perhaps they cite the academic record, they find a way to point out a dip in skills, whatever, just get the kid to go away. Yes, they essentially screw with these kids lives and then the kids are left scrambling to try and find a school with precious few days left and most schools all full up with scholarships. I’m not picking on Alabama, hell, it happened at Stanford – and Northwestern benefitted.
Meet incoming freshman RB Jordan Perkins from Lodi, CA. The ‘Cats 3-star RB commit wanted to go to Stanford and play for our good (cough) friend Jim Harbaugh. Yet, one problem. Perkins pledged his soul to Stanford well before signing day and then the weird calls starting coming. The Cardinal were having issues getting clearance on his grades. It went from days to weeks and wouldn’t you know it that February signing date was getting VERY close. It must have been a very tough case and his academics must have been suspect, right? Enhhhhh! Perkins boasts a 3.9 GPA. Welcome to the wonderful world of “oversigning”. I’m sure you’re “shocked” to find out Northwestern simply does not and will not play this game.
And then yesterday, just four days after Jim Tressel resigned for the scandal at Ohio State, the SEC makes a freakin’ joke of a grandstand by announcing – hold your breath – they are reducing the amount of scholarships offered in a season to 25 from 28. What’s worse is their school presidents jumped up and down saying “look at us – aren’t we just the model citizens”. Uh, fellas, IT IS AN NCAA RULE THAT YOU CAN ONLY ENROLL 25 SCHOLARSHIP PLAYER PER YEAR. Congratulations, SEC, you just announced that you are now going to abide by the rules. Welcome to the party.
Math. Basic math. Per NCAA rules a team is limited to having 85 scholarship players on its roster. The biggest bullshit is the PR spin term they’re using – “roster management”. If you follow the backchannel talk on this type of stuff you’ll know this is a direct response to the heat the conference is getting for oversigning. Yet, somehow they’re using the scholarship cap per season as some sort of veiled attempt to be ethical.
Kudos to three different sources for calling this out. First, ESPN.com’s Chris Low on the specific loopholes the conference will use to get around this, including things like oh, academic ineligibility. You see, as Low points out, if a handful of players don’t make the grade and sit out a semester but are part of that class, the five players won’t count against that “limit”. Or, what if there are only 20 slots available and you offer 25. Again, Low nails this – the 25 would be oversigning by five! Then there are things like “backcounting” (a player being counted towards last year’s class to adjust the math) and “grayshirting” (the act of delaying enrollment a full year because of the scholarship limit).
The second LTP standing ovation goes to Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jeff Schultz for this direct call-out to the SEC for their “nice try, but what a joke” move. Like Low, he called “BS” on the whole thing and again showed how the conference missed a golden opportunity to make a move towards the long road to the spectrum of “cleaner conference” it needs. Schultz did his homework and took a stand -unlike the SEC – and did right in the heart of the SEC’s largest market. Mr. Schultz, this ‘Cats for you.
Finally, we stand up loud and proud for our friend at Oversigning.com who make my obsession with Northwestern football look like a mainstream action. The entire site is dedicated, passionately, to this issue. Yesterday was the equivalent of NU going to the Rose Bowl in terms of frequency of posts and “OMG” moments. I can’t do the blog justice as there are so many damn good points on the SEC reaction including the absolutely insane totalitarian Nick Saban stance, replete with video about this very issue that includes the following response to a question about oversigning:
“You all are creating a bad problem for everybody,” Saban told reporters. “You’re going to mess up kids’ opportunities by doing what you’re doing. You think you’re helping ‘em but you’re really hurting ‘em. It took one case where somebody didn’t get the right opportunity. You need to take the other 100 cases where somebody got an opportunity.” – Nick Saban when asked about “oversigning” at SEC spring meetings.
You may be wondering what the Big Ten stance is on oversigning. Oh, you know, it’s been outlawed SINCE 19-Freakin-56! In 2002, the Big Ten opened up its zero tolerance of oversigning enabling schools to sign a total of three more scholarships than the total of 85 on the roster, but only with permission from the league office. The SEC coaches? Well, they voted unanimously – 12-to-0 against Mike Slive’s measure to reduce the scholarship per year cap.
We’re going to get Oversign.com to pay LTP a visit later this summer once he cools down. In the meantime, be sure to check out his oversign cup where he takes the simple formula of scholarship players at the end of last season, subtracts the departing players (graduation, transfer etc…) then shows the available scholarships and then the actual number offered. Ole Miss signed 12 more than they had room for, Alabama had 11, LSU and Arkansas were at 10…shall we go on? Do you see a trend? The Big Ten made the board with Michigan State at +4, which according to the Big Ten rule is a violation so something is not right there – either the math or Sparty is in appeal on a player and Penn State is plus three. Several Big Ten teams were UNDER their allotment like Nebraska and Iowa. During the past five seasons, according to ESPN, the SEC is AVERAGING signing 103 players per team per year. The Big Ten – 86. ‘Nuff said.
So there you have it – oversign 101 – and the scam of a PR stunt by the SEC to make it appear as if they’re playing more by the rules in the wake of the Ohio State scandal. It’s important the media continue to bring this to light as the issue is complicated and not one soundbite friendly meaning it is easier to hide the issue from those outside of the super hard core fans. Do your part to spread the word.
There you go. A deeper dive video from ESPN’s Outside the Lines for you to share to help the cause. More to come from the LTP mailbag, tomorrow, that is a follow-up on the Northwestern angle in the wake of the Ohio State fallout.
Quality Over Quantity
All too often we as fans get caught up in the number of commitments being an indicator of how we’ll we’re doing comparitively to the competition. One of my favorite aggregated posts is done by Adam Rittenberg who tracks the Big Ten recruiting scoreboard. With the above caveat laid out, only Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State have more recruits committed for 2012 than Northwestern (4) at this point. There are several higher rated players on other teams that we lost out in head-to-head competition, most notably lineman Dan Voltz who chose Wisconsin over NU. However, the bigger picture trend is that NU’s stategy of getting kids on board earlier has clearly been working. Coincidentally, Indiana was using this strategy under Bill Lynch and was in double digits last year at this time and now, likely due to the Kevin Wilson transition, they have zero 2012 commits.
Luke’s Fine Wine
Pretty neat feature here on Luke Donald’s signature wines and how atypical this sponsorship is in the world of sports, especially for someone ranked #1 in the world in his sport. The double ‘Cat angle here is the feature is done by Wildcat alum and CNBC sports business reporter, Darren Rovell.
Penn State Lands Pat Chambers As Hoops Coach, Will Reign Over NU Continue?
It can’t get any worse for Northwestern hoops fans when it comes to Penn State, so why not embrace a new head basketball coach for the Nittany Lions? Former Boston University head coach and Villanova assistant coach, Pat Chambers, was named the man to replace departed Ed DeChellis yesterday. Chambers led BU to the NCAA Tourney last year by virtue of winning the America East Conference. Penn State has not lost to Northwestern in five seasons, owning the ‘Cats in the way that we own Iowa in football.
LTP Purple Pledge Ticket Counter = +1
Kudos to long-time Michigan State Spartan fan, Matthew H. for picking up one season ticket for Northwestern football, his second favorite team. We’re just shy of the 10% mark, which isn’t even close to making it on pace for our 500 new season ticket goal. Oh, by the way, exactly 90 days from now at this moment, we’ll know whether or not we beat BC.
Great post LTP! I recently attended a work-related training that had one speaker who discussed how to change an area of law or policy. One way is to get your arguments out to the public in a clear, logical and principled way. (I know – there’s been a clear lack of that in U.S. culture of late). If all the chatter in the media is lies or baloney that’s all people will hear. This specific blog entry is an example of clear and principled argument. Crsha
Man if the SEC wanted to make a splash about this, they would have announced it on a Monday, not a Friday. Just the timing of the announcement makes it clear that they are hoping that the NCAA will ignore what’s going on while the NCAA is investigating (the admittedly more sordid) situation at tOSU.
What bothers me the most about this issue is that the coaches/ADs simply cannot be honest about their motivation. (hint: it’s not the students)
No, if a school is paying me $3-$5 mil a year, they are paying me to bring in the dough, not to educate the players. It would be refreshing if one, (just one!) coach told it like it is: “I’m paid to coach football for my school and make it profitable. If some kids benefit from that, great, but what my job is evaluated on is putting one in the W column, and representing the school on the field in the best way I can. No coach is evaluated on whether his players graduate or not, or whether someone is signed properly, or whether I proactively report minor violations to compliance etc. If these things get in the way of winning, I am not going to want to do them. If they want us to be molders of men, then redesign the system to incentivize that instead of simply winning.”
Instead it’s all, “we just don’t want to hurt the kids, deny them opportunities” etc. I feel bad for the parents that have to listen to these guys when recruiting their kids.
@wc grad – well said. GREAT comment…
Regarding the Jordan Perkins Stanford commit / oversigning , I had a front row seat to this scam. After HArbaugh had announced his exit, Jordan Perkins received a personal email from Stanford AD re-assuring Jordan that Stanford written offer was with the school not the coach and Stanford was honoring the offer. Then-silence from the Stanford AD Dept, a recruit left wondering what happened. Thank NU coaches for staying in contact and the subsequent signing of Jordan. Lots of Purple in Lodi .
@Chris Ray – thanks for the note. We’re thrilled to have Jordan! Be sure to send us a Northwestern “N” flag flying in Lodi and we’ll add it to the map on this site.
[...] [...]
An analysis of the top over-signers for the past five years was done recently. The entire SEC west made the top 12. Is it any surprise that the SEC West had five top 15 teams in 2010? Each team had “signed” equivalent of one extra class during that period. Saban, ect are notorious for signing too many kids and then running off the weak, injured, less talented.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/andy_staples/01/24/oversigning-data/index.html
TypeO – Wow, we are at the bottom of the list, and by no small margin! It’s interesting seeing OSU near the bottom as well, considering the overall perceived prestige of the program.
Let’s be clear on our terminology. Stringing a recruit along prior to signing day, as Stanford apparently did with Perkins, is objectionable, but it does not constitute “oversigning.” Programs such as ‘Bama, on the other hand, actually will pull a player’s scholarship at any point prior to the end of his eligibility. This frees up a scholarship for a new player and allows the program to maximize the talent across the 85 scholarship spots. That is the quintessence of oversigning and, in my opinion, is far more nefarious than Stanford’s treatment of Perkins.
@HudiBlitz – Explain to me how it is not. Stanford had more scholarships than they could make good on, had a better RB than Jordan commit and found a way to force him to exit.
@ Lake the Posts – Because Perkins wasn’t SIGNED in the first place. Oversigning is where you sign a surplus of recruits and then cut some. Pulling a scholarship offer or suggesting that a player look elsewhere is not oversigning. It may be objectionable, but it isn’t oversigning.
@HudiBlitz – point taken. Isn’t it the same spirit? You offer a scholarship you don’t have and make a verbal agreement – mutually – and then back out? Bottom line you are still screwing with someone’s future.
Re: Hudiblitz, I understand your point (after a recruit signs a National Letter of Intent) and it does differ to what happened to Jordan Perkins prior to National Letter of Intent Signing Day. What is wrong is the written offer by Stanford AD, the verbal agreements by the coaching staff, and the email from the AD 4 weeks before National Signing Day re-assuring the written offer. LTP is correct \screwing with someones future\ should never be allowed in your (pointed) stuation or to a 17yr high school player.
It is the same spirit, but to different degrees. One practice, however, is oversigning, and one is not.