Saw this and thought it was very interesting. The SEC has been widely criticized for this, but I'm sure the Big 10 does this too. I like this author's solution. There should be some penalty to prevent situations like this. Perhaps if you oversign by "X" number, then you get "X+2" less scholarships the following year.



At LSU, freshman offensive lineman Elliott Porter was called into coach Les Miles' office Tuesday and told that, in spite of the fact that he had been accepted to the university, given a dorm room and attended classes for a summer term, he has no scholarship because the Tigers signed more than the 25 players the NCAA allows schools to bring in each year. Though a few conferences -- including the SEC -- have rules aimed at curbing oversigning -- there is no overarching NCAA rule to protect players caught in a numbers crunch.

At the moment, Porter, a 6-foot-4, 285-pounder from Waggaman, La., is weighing his options. Does he go to another school? Does he accept Miles' offer of a "grayshirt," which would allow him to enroll at LSU on scholarship in January and still leave him five years to play four?

Porter shouldn't have to make that choice. He shouldn't have had to clear out his dorm room. He committed to the Tigers in July 2009. He did everything asked of him in the classroom and on the football field.

It would be easy to bash LSU and Miles for this, but it happens at a lot of schools. In recent years, bloggers have made a sport of spending the summer chronicling Alabama's annual quest to meet the 85-scholarship limit. The SEC passed its rule last year in response to Ole Miss signing 37 players. In 2009, Troy signed a whopping 40 players. (The Trojans signed a measly 34 in 2010.)

Under the current rules, schools are just like airlines that oversell flights. Just as Delta or U.S. Airways assumes not everyone will show up for the plane, coaches assume some players in the class won't qualify academically, or, in cases in which schools bump up against the 85-player maximum, that attrition among players already on the roster will open a slot for a signee. In LSU's case this year, Miles pulled off the feat of signing a class in which everyone qualified. That's great for Miles. That's too bad for Porter and lineman Cameron Fordham, who chose to enroll as a walk-on. They didn't even get a meal voucher or a bump into first class on a later flight.

"It's a business, the way things go," Porter told The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune. "They've got to do what's best for them and I've got to do what's best for me."

According to the NCAA, though, it's not a business. It's about educational opportunities for student-athletes. That's how the NCAA justifies the fact that football and men's basketball players who bring in millions for their athletic departments get the same scholarship payout as the last softball player on the bench. So why can't the organization protect the student-athlete in this case?

Yahoo!'s Matt Hinton and MGoBlog's Brian Cook, two people who have written thoughtfully on this subject in the past, had a brilliant suggestion so simple that even a heavy-handed bureaucracy should be able to bring it to fruition: Make a rule that requires schools to give an actual scholarship to every player they sign to a letter-of-intent.

Cook even suggested raising scholarship limits if necessary. I disagree. If a school has 22 slots on Feb. 2, 2011, it should sign 22 players. If three of those players don't qualify, that's the coach's fault for not recruiting more academically sound prospects. He can play the season with 82 players on scholarship and sign more next year.

Coaches would hate it, but the NCAA isn't supposed to protect the interests of millionaires who wear shorts to work most days. It's supposed to protect the interests of the 18-year-olds who were forced to sign a pledge that they would attend a university for a year with no enforceable return promise from the school.

Maybe this will work out better for Porter in the end. Maybe he'll choose another school that appreciates him enough to actually give him the scholarship it promised. He's free to play for another school this season.

Just as soon as he gets a waiver from the NCAA.

Get rid of it completely. Once a player signs, he counts for a scholarship even if he never makes it to school due to grades, arrests, or anything else. The whole point of oversigning is that these teams think many players won't qualify or make it.

This would make them be more careful with players with potential problems.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Paul Finebaum's take was to sweep it under the carpet. Not a big deal. His philosophy is that everyone is doing it to some extent, so a coach owes it to the program to do it. What bass-ackwards logic. Kinda like the Charles Barkley logic "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying." I hate Finebaum more and more each day. I tried switching back to Chicago stations yesterday, but no college talk again. Ho hum.

This is a pretty typical exercise. The oversigning helps a coach get ready for the yearly transfers, ineligibles and players who leave early (graduate in 4 years and leave with eligibilty left)

I think what Miles did was crap though because you end up having to select your lowest rated recruit and screwing that person. And then the NCAA has control of him. if you liked this person so much in July 2009 to offer a scholarship, you cant change your mind because you got a 4 star recruit at the same position.

From an Iowa perspective, I have noticed more grayshirt offers being made that morph into schaolarships if someone leaves early or stay grayshirt until January.