OL Bradley Bozeman will greyshirt

bamafaninOhiO said:

I think what he meant was if its done underhandedly...at the last minute to make roster room for a better player, but the kid isn't afforded the time or opportunity to look at other options.

Thats really where the issue resides.

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Perfect - Thanks

B1GTide said:

When a kid is not made aware of the change until the last minute, limiting his opportunities to find another "home".

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Agreed; pulling a stunt like Kiffin did is absolutely wrong because the kid had to try to enroll early with barely a week's notice (if that). With Bozeman and Taylor, our staff had talked with them several weeks (I believe Taylor was told in mid/ late December and Bozeman said he'd known 2 months ago) before NSD about grayshirting.

B1GTide said:

When a kid is not made aware of the change until the last minute, limiting his opportunities to find another "home".

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Any kid with a D1 grayshirt offer has other options.

And if the worst thing that happens to someone is they have their enrollment deferred a semester, we should all be so lucky.

If we really wanted to get rid of the grayshirt issue, we'd lift scholarship limitations. We'd take it back to pre-94 rules where schools were free to give as many scholarships as they wanted.

RedStar said:

Any kid with a D1 grayshirt offer has other options.

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If you believe that it is ethical to pull a scholarship from a commited player in the last few weeks before signing day with no warning, we will have to agree to disagree.

B1GTide said:

If you believe that it is ethical to pull a scholarship from a commited player in the last few weeks before signing day with no warning, we will have to agree to disagree.

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Show me where this has happened.

RedStar said:

Show me where this has happened.

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All over America. The kid at USC is a great example.

B1GTide said:

All over America. The kid at USC is a great example.

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So you sat in on the conversations? Or you're going to take the word of an 18 year old kid over a coaching staff?

IF it's happening I don't like it. But kids lie. Just last week a kid from Georiga lied about visiting Notre Dame. A few years ago a kid from Nevada had an elaborate ceremony where he committed to Cal even though the coaches from Cal had never heard of him.

Again, the easiest way to solve this is to lift the scholarship limitations.

Matt0424 said:

Are you going you take the word if Kiffen over anyone?

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Fair point. In situations that involve Kiffin, I just refuse to care. I know Kiffin's a liar, but I don't know the kid at all, so there's no reason for me to even speculate on who might be lying.

RedStar said:

Fair point. In situations that involve Kiffin, I just refuse to care. I know Kiffin's a liar, but I don't know the kid at all, so there's no reason for me to even speculate on who might be lying.

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Sometimes the kids come out satisfied - when that happens, they were probably involved in discussions with expectations set up front. But you can tell that this is not always the case. Kids and their parents upset, going public with ugly stories. Why would they do this and risk being blackballed if they were not telling the truth?

Ugly stuff happens everywhere, and coaching is no exception. You seem to want to trust coaches before players while I fall on the other end of the spectrum in this case. The kids have nothing to gain by lying, but the coaches clearly have something to gain.

TIDE-HSV said:

Saban doesn't do that.

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I never meant to suggest otherwise. I was simply responding to a question about a part of one of my posts in the thread.

B1GTide said:

Sometimes the kids come out satisfied - when that happens, they were probably involved in discussions with expectations set up front. But you can tell that this is not always the case. Kids and their parents upset, going public with ugly stories. Why would they do this and risk being blackballed if they were not telling the truth?

Ugly stuff happens everywhere, and coaching is no exception. You seem to want to trust coaches before players while I fall on the other end of the spectrum in this case. The kids have nothing to gain by lying, but the coaches clearly have something to gain.

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No, my problem throughout all this is that coaches are getting the blame instead of the NCAA.

It's simple. You want to do away with this, get rid of scholarship limitations.

In a perfect world, at least in a perfect NCAA world, a coach would extend 25 scholarships to 25 players. All of those players would commit on the spot, and no one would get their feelings hurt. This is a land of unicorns and cotton candy clouds. It's a land that doesn't exist.

Coaches don't offer scholarships to 25 different recruits. They offer scholarships to 50-70+ recruits because not every kid who receives an offer will commit. This problem is compounded by the fact that a large portion of these recruits won’t commit until signing day. Coaching staffs have their hands tied. Offer too few kids and they run the risk of not signing a full class. Offer too many kids and they run the risk of asking one of them to take a grayshirt. What happens when you offer 70 kids and 30 kids come running back saying yes. What do you do? You can't sign 30, you're going to have to tell 5 kids to take a hike or take a grayshirt. And you'd better believe this happens. It's why some coaches throw out conditional offers, to avoid this as much as they can. But it's always a problem. You only hear about the kids who think they've gotten the short end of the stick rather than the kids who understand the process.


Lift scholarship limitations. It's really that simple.

TIDE-HSV said:

Saban doesn't do that. Mostly the tactic is used in cases like this - injury requiring a lengthy rehab period. It really benefits the kid because it saves a RS year, whereas if he enrolled normally, he'd have to spend his RS year rehabbing. This was exactly the situation with the boy in GA over whom Saban caught so much flak, primarily in the GA press, last year. His offer was changed to a GS when he blew his ACL. My memory is that Saban used the device in his first couple of years also with slow-developing kids/positions, such as OL. Mostly lately, it's been used with injuries. I don't think he's ever completely pulled a scholly for injury. I think before he would do that, he'd go ahead and sign the kid and put him on medical after he was on the team. I know that we've had a couple of kids who came on campus injured and never saw the field before being placed on medical. I only wish all schools would follow his policies. I guess the most appalling case I've heard of was the kid who actually reported and was on campus at LSU when he was told his scholly had disappeared. Maybe someone else's memory will be more detailed about individual kids...

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Yep, I remember that. That was worse than what happened this year at USC since that kid at least was told a week before he showed up on campus (still pretty pathetic imho). A grayshirt is a great opportunity for positions that usually require extra S&C work before a kid sees the field (both LOS).

RedStar said:

No, my problem throughout all this is that coaches are getting the blame instead of the NCAA.

It's simple. You want to do away with this, get rid of scholarship limitations.

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I haven't given that much thought, so don't really have an opinion. I guess it would work, but I am not sure how it would effect the sport. An interesting discussion topic.

In terms of ethics, why is it that the players are allowed to do all this stuff, but a school isn't allowed to change their mind?

I think in the very least, you shop, we shop is a good policy. So, I don't worry about ethics at all in terms of scholarships unless the kid hasn't taken any unofficial, official, or in-home visits (from other schools) and has been firm the entire time. Likewise, I do think being healthy has to be relevant. This is a football scholarship, if you can't play football that is an issue.

Now, assuming you're healthy, and you're 100% committed, I think changing to a greyshirt or pulling a scholarship on short notice is an issue. Doing it to a kid when he shows up to enroll is pretty foul. But, if you give a guy a couple weeks advance notice, and he's not even on campus, it's hard to imagine a greyshirt being a problem. I mean, a greyshirt could give a kid a better shot at the NFL.

The problem does go back to the football welfare signing limits and scholarships. These should be changed to reduce the pressure it puts on coaches. They have academic standards, they are supposed to not pull scholarships, they have other rules and restrictions to follow (like the SEC rule against MLB players), they have to deal with fickle teenagers, and these hard limits.

jps1983 said:

Yep, I remember that. That was worse than what happened this year at USC since that kid at least was told a week before he showed up on campus (still pretty pathetic imho). A grayshirt is a great opportunity for positions that usually require extra S&C work before a kid sees the field (both LOS).

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Didn't Spurrier also pull a bunch of scholarships when he showed up at South Carolina? The problem isn't limited to greyshirting - though this thread is about greyshirting. When coaches get in a bind, where do the kids stand on the priorities list? Some clearly put wins ahead of the kids. If this were the NFL, I could understand it a bit more - but it isn't.

B1GTide said:

Sometimes it is - think Manti Te'o.

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Repeatedly asking a kid about his GS situation, when he is OK with it somehow equals grilling a many-times-verified liar about his lies? I somehow miss the parallel.

KrAzY3 said:

In terms of ethics, why is it that the players are allowed to do all this stuff, but a school isn't allowed to change their mind?

I think in the very least, you shop, we shop is a good policy.

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I agree, but they do have that power. They can make their offers conditional. Tell a kid that if he continues to "shop", his offer becomes conditional and could be lost. Hoke is doing this at Michigan.

B1GTide said:

Didn't Spurrier also pull a bunch of scholarships when he showed up at South Carolina? The problem isn't limited to greyshirting - though this thread is about greyshirting. When coaches get in a bind, where do the kids stand on the priorities list? Some clearly put wins ahead of the kids. If this were the NFL, I could understand it a bit more - but it isn't.

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I don't know about Spurrier, but Tubberville was essentially pulling schollies this year when he took over at Wisconsin. His staff essentially didn't contact some of the players (this may have been b/c of the dead period), but when the players got through to the staff, they were told that they no longer had schollies. Some coaches do that, but I don't think it happens too often considering how much turnover there is among college HC's. The coaches know they need to develop relationships with HS coaches and pulling offers on kids is not the way to win over a HS coach. It's really surprising when a new staff doesn't honor the scholly.