Doing more with less

Jan 23, 2017, 2:50 PM

Looking at the # commitments/signees by year, and Clemson is at a deficit versus it's peer group. For example, Alabama signed 101 from 2013-2016 and another 25 this year. Clemson signed 93 from 2013-2016 with 13 committed this year. Tennessee has 104 and outrageous 109 respectively. The numbers may change a bit with sign and place guys, but these other schools are pushing more folks through the program.

Is it our grey shirts or lack of transfers that keeps our numbers low compared to others? Teams on probation were able to recruit more numbers each year. All numbers pulled from ESPN Team Ranks.

Can someone explain how the math works? Apologies for the bad table layout.

Rank17 Team 2013 2014 2015 2016 Curr17 4yr'16 4yr'17
1 Alabama 25 27 24 25 25 101 101
2 OhioSt 24 23 27 25 19 99 94
3 Georgia 33 21 30 21 23 105 95
4 Mich 27 16 14 28 25 85 83
5 FSU 22 28 21 25 21 96 95
6 Okla 25 27 24 20 24 96 95
7 LSU 27 23 25 24 20 99 92
8 TexA&M 32 22 25 22 26 101 95
9 Auburn 23 23 27 21 20 94 91
10 Tenn 21 35 27 21 26 104 109
11 Clem 23 22 26 22 13 93 83
12 SoCal 13 19 24 20 17 76 80
13 Miami 19 26 22 18 20 85 86
14 ND 24 23 24 23 15 94 85
15 PennSt 17 25 25 20 18 87 88
16 SCAR 21 21 31 24 22 97 98
17 Stanf 12 20 22 25 12 79 79
19 Florida 30 24 21 25 15 100 85
20 UCLA 24 20 19 29 17 92 85
21 Wash 22 24 24 18 17 88 83
32 VaTech 21 28 24 21 25 94 98
35 Texas 15 17 28 24 15 84 84
37 OleMiss 28 26 22 24 14 100 86
38 Oregon 19 21 23 19 16 82 79

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are notorious for "encouraging" players that don't contribute to leave the program (i.e. transfer or leave school) Thus they regular sign classes closer to the max of 25 (per academic year) because they typically cull the herd. They also take more risk on academic casualties than do other conferences so a number of these "signees" never make it in the door.

Basically schools have 85 scholarships and you can be on scholarship for a max of 5 years with a redshirt season. If every player used his redshirt and played all 5 years you'd only be signing about 17 every year. Obviously not every player redshirts and many leave the program for a number of reasons, but if you assume the average stay on campus is 4 years that's more like 21 per class.

Looking at the SEC numbers, it's pretty clear the average stay on Campus there is more like 3 years. This would mean you'd need more like 28 per class to maintain 85. Never mind how you get to 28, there are ways, but you can see that the SEC classes are much closer to 25+ each year than other conferences. Players leaving for the NFL don't account for all of this, basically these kids get "cut" for lack of a better term as their scholarships are not renewed and they are forced to transfer.

I don't think this practice is as prevalent in other conferences. I think we do a good job of honoring the scholarship for the duration of the players academic eligibility, thus we wind up with some small classes due to the 85 scholarship cap.

Doing more with less

It's called high turnover due to

Also, I didn't mention, losses due to normal graduation

SEC teams

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