Nick Saban's the Real Snake Oil Salesman Around These Parts

If you wandered over to the various recruiting sites on signing day you probably noticed big banners proclaiming Alabama's return to power via the nation's top recruiting class. This is due in large part to the enormous number of recruits that put pen to letter of intent for Nick Saban: 32, a full seven more than the NCAA's yearly limit of 25. Only Miami managed to stretch the boundaries of the rule further, signing 33.

Both classes are top five but in are overrated by sheer quantity. Alabama's #1 class is actually #6 by star average; Miami's #4 class is 14th by that metric. Both contain large numbers of players with no chance to qualify this fall; it's all smoke and mirrors.

That's irritating, but Tim Gayle's piece on the massive 'Bama oversigning is disturbing. Gayle crunches the numbers and comes to these conclusions:

Four to six guys are not going to qualify.
Four more guys who are marginally useful can plausibly be given medical scholarships and removed from the team.
Six more scholarships need to be forcibly extracted from somewhere.

Around six guys who are playing for Alabama now or expect to be in the fall are going to be told to get bent by the time fall practice rolls around. But let's all complain about how nasty Rich Rodriguez is, why don't we?

Some might argue that no one's really hurt by the practice of oversigning, but this shocking assertion from Bruce Feldman's latest post($) argues otherwise?

One administrator I spoke with said schools also can make it so some player doesn't qualify if they don't need him to, which may sound surprising, but it probably shouldn't at this point.

Jesus. That's truly filthy. When this happens a kid who manages to get qualified is shuffled off to a JUCO or prep school because there's not enough room for him. The school who signed him to a letter of intent is screwing him out of a chance to play at an actual D-I school for purely selfish motives.

The NCAA really has to do something about this. Feldman makes a point that the new APR restrictions do impose a cost upon teams that cycle through players willy-nilly, but your APR isn't affected when a kid who signed a LOI with your team doesn't qualify.

The 25-kid limit is a great idea that hurts schools who experience extreme attrition, but it's a paper tiger. Anyone who comes in for the winter semester, either via grayshirt or early enrollment, can count against either class. It's time to stop that and count kids against the class their high school teammates are in. And it's time to limit the number of LOIs schools can accept, and do away with these fictional classes of 30+ that do nothing but prop up egos and damage the careers of kids at the bottom of them.