by danwismar » Mon Aug 09, 2010 4:38 pm
The Big Ten was the first major conference to enact rules against oversigning, so it follows that they have been mostly immune from the kinds of criticism the SEC has received lately. The Buckeyes under Tressel have typically undersigned...averaging, I believe, about 20 signees per year over the last five or six years. (By comparison, the new SEC rules "limit" the programs to 28 signees per year....and 25 enrollees, to allow for some non-qualifiers.
If every player stayed for four years (instead of the occasional five, somewhat cancelled out by the occasional early departure after 3) signing 21 kids per year would be about right to hit the 85 total maximum scholarships at any one time.
Tressel likes to leave himself some wiggle room, because he likes to award scholarships to one or two walk-ons each year to reward guys who have been in the program for a year or two and made a contribution.
The only "grayshirt" they have had in the last five years or so was Todd Boeckman...and he was told right at the outset that's what they wanted to do with him, so he went in to it with his eyes open, knowing he'd be paying his own way at first, and counting on the following year's recruit count.
Every program has attrition...guys who transfer...decide to quit the program after long histories of injuries...recruits who sign but never enroll due to grade issues...guys who fail to stay academically eligible after they enroll...or get disciplined for off the field stuff and leave or get thrown out. OSU has had players in all these categories in the Tressel years and before, but I have not heard so much as a rumor that any player has been leaned on against his wishes to leave the program under any of the above circumstances.
And never anything even approaching what LSU did to this Elliott kid.
In fact, they are carrying several non-contributing upperclassmen (no need to name names...we know who they are) that other programs might well have run off by now, given their numbers problems. The old recruiting adage is that it isn't the recruits you don't get that kill you...it's the ones you do get that take up a scholarship for four years and never contribute to the program that kill you.
I'm sure coaches have heart-to-heart talks with players about realistic chances of playing time, etc...and that might lead guys (like Jermil Martin this year) to decide to transfer. OSU has had a couple of players that could be considered in the category of "sign and place" if you stretch the definition a little bit.
The practice is widely used in the SEC....signing kids with the full knowledge that they won't qualify on grades, and then "stashing" them in program-friendly JC's where they try to get eligible (while playing ball, working on the weights, etc) while also keeping them from competing programs. The occasional (and that's the key word here) OSU player who goes to Fork Union (Carlos Hyde recently)and then moves on to OSU is the only thing that really compares.
The Hyde case is really the only one recently I can think of at OSU. Eddie George came out of Fork Union Military (almost 20 years ago) but he was not a guy who was recruited and signed before he went there. Even the Duron Carter situation isn't comparable, since he signed, enrolled as eligible, and played a year before being forced to go to a JC due to grade issues at OSU.
I'm not up on how much or how little the issue has been a problem elsewhere in the Big Ten, but like I said, they outlawed oversigning a few years before the other conferences got into it. I do know that other BT schools use the junior college system much more than OSU does.
"I believe it is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting." H.L. Mencken
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