At Least Bobby Petrino Isn't Pretending
via Get The Picture and Sports By Brooks
Bobby Petrino has all the social skills of a PhD student in electrical engineering. This is how you get an NFL team to swear revenge upon you and your clan*. He's a weird dude. So his Arkansas program eschews the usual kabuki dance of medical scholarships and "voluntary" transfers in favor of The Truth™:
FAYETTEVILLE - Arkansas has granted scholarship releases to two more players from its football program in offensive lineman Cam Feldt and linebacker Austin Moss, Razorbacks coach Bobby Petrino said Thursday through a team spokesperson.
The players are the fourth and fifth to be released this week as coaches perform annual scholarship evaluations. Wide receiver Lance Ray, kicker Eddie Camara and tight end Ryan Calender have also been granted releases from the program.
Arkansas is also working toward granting offensive lineman Colby Berna a medical hardship, which would end his playing career. Berna, a Fayetteville native, has struggled with shoulder problems since high school and didn't play during his two seasons on campus.
The truth comes cloaked in a bit of PR spin, but there it is. Arkansas is straight up cutting five dudes and moving a sixth to St. Saban Memorial Hospital. The usually even-keeled Doctor Saturday breaks out his barrel-aged, 18-year old sarcasm in response to the "granted releases" spin in response, and you've heard it all before here. Surprise! I still find the above completely awful.
But I really mean the headline above: by refusing to pretend he's putting kids on the slow boat to a crappy school no one's ever heard of he may be in charge of a program that flagrantly violates the spirit of the NCAA's principles, but at least he's not lying about it. This puts Petrino above the Sabans and Nutts and Tommy Bowdens of the world in the same way PhD EEs are above the sociopaths who end up at Goldman Sachs selling mortgage packages they know will collapse. I'll take the idiot over the lizard any day. By admitting Arkansas takes the bit about one-year renewable scholarships to its most ruthless extreme, Petrino allows us to talk about whether we want our football programs solely focused on on-field performance.
I'm guessing the answer to that will eventually be "no." The heat has moved from obscure bloggers like yrs truly to coaches and presidents at schools with scruples. The NCAA is faced with ballooning scandals as players react to the system: coaches get theirs by axing anyone that can't help them; players get theirs by taking whatever is offered them. The NCAA can't defend its principles of amateurism at the same time the most successful conference in the most successful sport is dumping anyone not immediately useful. If they do, I suggest they change their commercial tagline to "too many of us are going pro with a glorified associate's degree because we got cut and sent to JUCO."
Bobby Petrino can't be bothered to lie any more because people will badger him in press conferences and we're a step closer to ending, or at least associating costs with, cutting any kid who doesn't work out.
*[A thousand years from now the descendants of Bobby Petrino will be robotic feudal slum lords prosecuting an ancient war with Atlfalcorp no one remembers the origins of. Fayetteville will be underwater and everyone in Atlanta dead in the aftermath of the Great Traffic Jam, but the war will go on.]
people did get cut if they didn't perform academically, didn't pass fitness tests, violated integrity in some way, etc. (i.e., did perform to set expectations).
As I said though, if the practice is transparent, the recruit is living on his own informed decision. If he still really wants to to take the risk to play for 'Bama. That is his decision. If he gets cut (and the NCAA allows waivers), then he took the risk, and is able to recover by transferring.
I am just saying: if it is transparent, and if the consequences are fair, then I don't see that it is unethical. The current practices are not.
It sounds like people getting cut from the ROTC is no different from football players being kicked off of the team when they don't go to class or practice or get in off-field trouble, which I have no problem with (within reason).
I agree with you that transparency would save oversigning from being unethical to some extent but I also think that the difference in resources/knowledge (wisdom, even) between a major college football program like Alabama and a recruit is so vast that a typical contract analysis of the situation isn't appropriate. The transparency you describe would certainly make things much better, though.
When you read stories like this. It just absolutely does not seem to compare in scale of the issue. I suppose the NCAA will see that there is nothing wring with this unless someone actually complains (not sure why nobody has not already).
dibs on the kicker.
Well done, sir.
It would be nice if some reporters in the South would call up these players who were "granted" releases and try to interview them. I say that, fully realizing any journalist who did so and ran the story would immediately be in danger of physical harm.
The fast majority of SEC fans have no idea what the term 'student-athlete' means, and they sure as hell don't know it's hyphenated.
I think this practice is despicable, but only because they yank the scholarship. Frankly, I'd be fine with this:
1. Coach brings kid into room and tells him he is off the football team as he's not going to see the field
2. Agrees to continue a scholarship at the school, just not a football scholarship. Also agrees the kid can be on the practice squad (or whatever is allowable without counting against the 85 limit)
3. Has no problem (obviously) if the kid wants to transfer and try to make a team somewhere else.
Now there is a way that big-time boosters can put their money to work, scholarships for kids that tried but just couldn't make the team.
Am I a jerk for thinking that? If so, why?
I think this is fine from the perspective of the student-athlete, but it still flouts the spirit of the 85 scholarship limit. That is, it's still a competitive advantage for teams with the willingness and resources to do it.
Resources - rich schools would benefit tremendously from such a system, prohibitively so. You cannot claim an ameteur, competitive environment with such imbalance.
Technically, of course, this would fall victim to the NCAA's scholarship rules (anyone on scholarship whether track, academic, etc., counts against the 85 scholarship limit). I do wonder what the NCAA would think of a kid who was cut from the football team (and not allowed to practice) but was offered an academic scholarship.
In general, if this practice was employed across the board (continuing scholarship support but cutting players), I would be ok with such cases not counting against the scholarhip limit. College football is alreadly largely professionalized, at least this practice keeps the football team from poisoning the academic integrity and responsibility toward students of these institutions that are supposedly centrally focused on education.
It would likely have significant Title IX problems, however.
It's a start, and would be better than the current practice, but what if Student X really wanted to play football?
Let's say we've got recruit X, who has #1 school Arkansas and #2 school Vandy. He decided on Arkansas because either way he'll get an education, and the football will be better at Arkansas. He's a 3/4* prospect and doesn't have dreams of going pro, but wants to get a degree. He gets called into the office and told "you're off the team, but can still go to school here." If it hadn't been for football Recruit X would NEVER have gone to Arkansas, he would have gotten the better education at Vandy. You're retroactively making Recruit X make a college decision based NOT on football. At this point his options are Go to Arkansas, stop playing football and be a normal student/practice player, or sit out a year and go to Vandy (if they have room/take him) and follow his dream to play D-1 football.
Maybe they could waive the 1-year sit out if a team cuts a player? Maybe waive ALL transfer restrictions (like the B1G not allowing scholarship transfers between schools)? I'm not claiming to have the answer, but just pointing out a potential problem.
If Recruit X knew he was a 3* and was at risk of loosing his scholarship during his career, and knew that this was a more likely result at Arkansas than Vandy, then he should live with the consequences of his own decision.
What if recruit X is a 3* but since he was 5 years old has been the absolute toast of his small town. The papers all sing his accolades, he has been the FUCKING MAN for his whole life, and now he's getting offers from all these D-1 programs saying that he's the FUCKING MAN. He knows sometimes oversigning happens, but come on, he's the FUCKING MAN and he's 17 years old! He's invincible! Those horror stories could NEVER happen to him.
I wasn't that sweet at anything at age 17 but I still thought I was invincible and that horror stories wouldn't happen to me, I have to imagine that these kids feel the same way. They're not in a vacuum saying "I'm one of 31 recruits for 25 spots. That means 6 kids will be cut. There are 4 players at my position, and odds are one of those four will be cut. Do I take that 25% chance?" Even if a smart kid does this kind of analysis his thought process probably (and should be if he's going to succeed) will be "I'm better than the other 3 kids, and I'll out work them and win my spot". Remember, they've been the best forever, they probably think that heading into the big pond with the bigger fish, they're still a damn big fish. He'll think that he can beat out the other 3 and wont be cut.
I would up-vote this post if I knew how to up-vote with the new system.
To add to what you said, our hypothetical player has to uproot his life and move from Arkansas to Vanderbilt, which is a big deal when you're 19 or 20.
I wrote a diary about this a while back my ideas are in there. Basically, I felt like anyone cut should be able to remain on scholarship for 5 years or through degree completion, whichever happened first or be able to transfer without sitting out to any school that would have them--no restrictions on schools other than a requirement to have mutual interest.
SEC and possibly other big time sports programs could afford to open the floodgates and funnel prospects into their system and keep the top 85. This benefits them obviously but could also potentially be abused to keep other schools from signing recruits. If we had unlimited capacity to sign tight ends this year, we could go on a spree, right? But we're finding that we need to be selective and try to best match player's school and team interests with our own limited roster/scholarship sizes.
There are two separate problems with oversigning in general: 1st is the recruit getting screwed out of his scholly.
The 2nd issue is that not everybody does it....so these coaches are getting a free pass on sub-par talent evaluation. Some schools take a kid who doesn't pan out and cut him, while others have a 'sunk cost' in football terms taking up a scholarship.
This is not fair.
So, while your solution keeps the kid on scholarship, there would still be a competitive advantage gained by those who engaged in the process vs. those who still thought it was a bit sketchy.
It also negates some of the intentions of the 85 scholarship limit which was to bring some parity to college football ( which indirectly gets the best players more playing time, as instead of them riding bench behind a 5* at a big school they're starting at a lesser school).
I have yet to make it past the first sentence, but as a PhD student in Electrical Engineering, I'm assuming that Petrino is pulling in ladies left and right. I hope to wingman for him one day at Rick's.
Who was the tool that was laughing, at the end, of the Saban video? What was so damn funny? There's nothing worse than a toadie.
I like how in the still image at the top, Saban looks like he's wearing a little beanie.
What is the reporter's question? I know he's asking about schollies, but is it about a particular player or the whole team?
I read on this blog that Saban once admitted he didn't know how many players were on scholarship at Paul Finebaum's Alabama CT. Is this it? Sounds like he's asking about a particular player
Rebel Scum!
It's getting to the point where players should know the deal going in. If they still choose to play for a program like that, then so be it. It doesn't matter how much their egos have been stroked, large egos are not a problem for society to fix. There are options, even within the SEC, that do not oversign. It's sleazy, but they're 17, not 7.
That still doesn't make the practice ethical. The NCAA could fix the whole problem with a couple of paragraphs deliniating what happens if a player is cut.
At what point will recruits just stop signing with schools who cut kids?
To ask a follow up to my own question, do they all think they're the better than other guys and won't get left out? Do they not follow these issues like we do? Does the chance to play at a top school (the ones who do it are usually title contenders or atleast in bsc conferences) overwhelm any concerns about getting the boot?
Even if you followed things really, really closely, were a low two-star prospect at QB, would you sign at Michigan given their QB situation as it stands (including Morris and maybe a top guy from this class) or would you go to Eastern Michigan? I'd choose Michigan in a heartbeat. Change Michigan to Texas, and I'd go to Texas. They're also better schools for the most part than the lower tier schools.
Oh who am I kidding, guilty as charged. However, if you read the FAQ, you'll see that Brian received two Computer Engineering degrees from UofM. So the correct joke to insert here is one about a pot and a kettle.
They're probably not going to address the oversigning issue. Too much money floating around. It will take extreme pressure from the BCS conferences or pressure in the form of laws or lawsuits.
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