Brief Q&A: Oversigning and Reasonable Solutions

First off, what is oversigning?

Oversigning is when a coach signs more prospects than they have available scholarships for.  The NCAA has a hard cap on the number of scholarship players teams can sign every year (25) and the number of overall scholarship players a team can have on at any given time (85).  Coaches who oversign sign players in recruiting periods which circumvent the 25 signee rule and give scholarships to more than 85 players.  To reach NCAA standards, the schools either sign players who they don't think will be academically eligible and send them off to JUCO where they can be picked up later, or take away scholarships from players on the team through medical hardship waivers or other avenues. 

Why is oversigning bad?

Oversigning is the equivalent of cutting players from the team to make room for better players.  While this may not seem so unreasonable on face value, the ramifications for the students are horrible.  Imagine being on scholarship to go to college for physics and your professor telling you that you are losing your scholarship to some new transfer student.  You can no longer afford to stay in school and are forced to drop out with nothing but a few credit hours to show for your time.  For kids who play football, this can be devastating to their futures.

A while back I talked about the reasons why athletes should not be paid.  In that article, I mentioned that student-athletes are given special protections which keeps them stable, and that paying athletes like professionals would tip the scale against the colleges who are forced to protect the rights of all athletes and simultaneously pay them without being guaranteed their rights as an employer to fire unsuccessful employees and to maximize the value of their dollar.  This is the opposite of that.  In oversigning, schools are allowed to treat athletes like employees without paying them, effectively making them indentured servants who can be used and discarded at the whim of their masters.  It is ineffective to say that the students still get an education as compensation in this scenario since they can be released before they ever receive their degree and never be compensated for their time.

This is particularly difficult on student athletes and especially less wealthy kids who may not have the educational background to succeed without the help of the athletic tutors.  Taking that away denies their chance at an education.  While one maycertainly an argument to be made that many college students who receive academic scholarships don't necessarily have their scholarships renewed from year to year, it is a non sequitor.  Universities are centers for learning, those who lose their academic scholarships normally due so because of a failure to live up to their academic commitments or fall into legal trouble.  From the standpoint of the college president, there should be a major difference between failing to make grades and failing to make a tackle.  It is a murky issue but the bottom line is this: institutions of higher learning should not allow football to determine how they go about their mission of educating.  By allowing oversigning, institutions are openly admitting that athletic performance is more important than education.

What should be done?

Originally there were no athletic scholarships for players.  This is only an issue because college football became such big business that schools decided they needed to give their players something for bringing in all that money to the University (that should sound very familiar).  It is unreasonable to go back to that model now, but there are some things we can look back to.  The four year scholarship, which guaranteed a player four years of college upon signing his letter of intent, should be one thing that is looked at for the future.  Players should be guaranteed four years at an institution in order to guarantee that they receive the value of their education.  Scholarships should then be renewable for a fifth year if necessary. 

Second, the 85 rule has to be enforced year round.  Student athletes should be made aware of their rights with a scholarship including their right not to transfer if they so choose.  No more bullying kids to leave in order to open up space on the roster.  This should coincide with better policing of the medical hardship waiver which has been also been abused to stretch the scholarship limit.  There needs to be a hard and fast rule on this issue and it schools should be required to document the movements of their players and their scholarship status publicly.

Third, there needs to be an elimination of the 25 signing per year limit.  It is counterproductive because it means that, for programs that follow the rules, they will be operating with a short roster on years when more than 25 players graduate.  Schools should be allowed to sign as many players as they need without without surpassing the limit.  Also, there should be  a discussion on the 85 scholarship limit and perhaps expanding it to 90 or 95 players.  This will be difficult because of the Title IX implications but it needs to at least be discussed as a possibility since the current roster limit makes signing players trickier for coaches.