secret to recruiting success...

and by transitive property, onfield success, simple just do the SEC way:

This is what's going on, and its wrong. Between this and grey-shirting, it just sick.

Start with 65 players.
1. Sign 20. 85 total.
2. Graduate* 20 seniors. Run off 5. Sign 25 kids. 85 total.
3. Lose 5 to "attrition." Graduate 15. Run off 5. Sign 30. Apply 5 to last year. 85 total.
4. Lose 5 to "attrition." Graduate 15. Run off 3. Sign 33, Grey-shirt 5 kids. JC 5 kids. 85 total.
5. Lose 3 to "attrition." Graduate 15. Run off 5. Sign 26. Grey-shirt 3. 85 total.

In those five years you've signed 134 kids.

-stinger78 TOS

*graduate = exhaust eligibility

Btw, that's a whole extra class over a 4 year period.

If something so utterly terrible is occurring, why isn't it a bigger deal? Why isn't more light being shed on it? Or is this a case of GT fans complaining about something that really isn't as bad as they make it out to be?

Over the last 6 years, GT has signed a total of 112 players. Over the same time period, Bama has signed 159 and Ugag 139. Yeah, that's a pretty fair playing field. It's hard enough to beat them straight up as all the blue chippers already want to go there, but to have this kind of numbers advantage is ridiculous.

How does Saben have room to sign so many players? Easy, attrition. Well, that's not an answer, all teams have attrition. Well, what about transition between NSD and the start of fall classes? I dunno, I imagine that's pretty rare, but a program might lose a guy in that span every couple years or so, right? Maybe, not Bama....

(Alabama) has lost 21 scholarships players between NSD and August over the last 2 years. That's an entire recruiting class. And 6 of those 21 were medical hardships.

Oversigning.com

super long, but interesting none the less:

If you redshirt all your players, none go pro early or graduate early, nobody flunks out, and you have no career ending injuries, you can only sign 17 players a year with an 85 player limit. We've averaged a little over 18 1/2 scholarships over the last 6 years if your numbers are correct. Gailey wanted to recruit about 20 kids a year, but never got a chance because we were on NCAA probation for a good bit of his tenure, because Gailey was big on redshirting. I can think of no career ending injuries to any players during Johnson's tenure, although there may have been some. Saban has about 5 a year. We only had room for about 15 this year, because we tend to redshirt and we tend to retain kids well, and very few go pro early (exception Stephen Hill).

While there are exceptions either way, one of the differences between Tech and Alabama is that the kid who comes to Tech generally is really interested in education, football is a means to obtain that education. So the kid who chooses to go to Tech in large part because of the quality of the education he will receive isn't going to transfer to a place that provides a lower quality education for playing time (The QB Shaw who transferred to GSU is probably an exception to that rule of thumb).

If a kid is going to Alabama, he's going for football, and the education is a necessary evil he has to put up with to play football (Barrett Jones is the Alabama exception, Barrett is a very bright guy, a really good student, and obviously values education, however, if Barrett hadn't been able to win a staring job at Alabama, he could have gotten an education equivalent to Alabama's almost anywhere, so he could have easily transferred out of Alabama for playing time somewhere else and acheived all his educational goals). When players do that, when they leave for playing time elsewhere, then the Universities (SIC) they attend can recruit to the vacancies they leave when they transfer.

If Tech sticks to its word, and the commitments it makes to a kid and his family, to get him to sign with Tech, there is a cost associated with that behavior. That cost is, you can only sign, at most, about 18 - 20 kids a year.

This situation is why Dodd left the SEC. If you look at our last recruiting year under Dodd in the SEC, that was a pathetic recruiting year compared to what our competitors were doing.

In the last week, a lot of us have bemoaned the fact that kids today don't seem to understand the meaning of the word commitment. None of those same people seem to bemoan the fact that Nick Saban doesn't understand the word commitment either. They want to be him. If you go to Alabama, Nick is committed to you as long as you don't get injured, and you don't lose your job to somebody else. And what Nick is doing would be fair if this were the NFL, if football were your job, and if you were getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do that job. Under NCAA rules, that's not supposed to be the deal at Alabama. In exchange for your services as a football player, the only thing the University of Alabama is promising you as compensation is the ability to get a degree from the University of Alabama at no cost to you. Note that I didn't say a degree in a meaningful course of study because that ship has sailed.

Nick Saban apparently doesn't get too upset when some recruit de-commits from the University of Alabama. That's because Nick ain't prepared to commit to any of his players. And in this regard, Nick is consistent.

Sometimes it is difficult to lead an ethical life in an unethical world.

-ALincoln TOS