Rockne's Roundtable

Rule 17-4F of the NCAA covers this issue very clearly:

No SEC team can sign over 25 recruits in a given year, unless said team is on the ESPN list of teams we must slobber over. For example, Kentucky must adhere to this rule. Alabama and Georgia may do as they please.

I think they can sign as many as they want (we all can really), but it comes down to how many are in camp when the school year starts. At that point, you can only have 25 per signing class. Recruits who enroll early count to last year's total. I'm not sure what that would be for Georgia. But after that is taken away, they would need to cut people until they get to 25.

Well early enrolees count for the previous year. Ga does not do the cut in sign like almost any other sec school.

This practice was started by the late great Bama Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant.. He coined it "grey shirting" or "Deadwood"... The NCAA has a rule against it but the SEC is the only Conference in the country that allows it.. A few years ago however Florida and Vanderbilt decided to stop the practice of it... Their reason for doing it is that they know a good percentage of said players will not get released through the NCAA Clearinghouse so they stock pile ... Sad thing is that its not like the SEC's academic standards are the toughest!!

The onle requirement in the es see see is 2 simple rules.
1. Over sign and cut the players who don't (deserve) a scholly
2. Gray shirt players

The SEC has long engaged in "grey-shirting." Several years ago, 'Bama actually took about 35. To comply with NCAA regulations, only 25 enrolled at Tuscaloosa. The rest were placed in junior colleges throughout the area. After a year or so, if some of the kids on campus failed to meet expectations, their scholarships would be changed to medical (or they could transfer) and the junior college kids would replace them. At 35 "scholarships" a year, this gave 'Bama 40% more players in the "program." This gave them a built in ability to overcome the inevitability of misreading certain kids' capacity to contribute, bullet proofed them against decimation by injury, and gave them a way to get kids that have no academic prowess eligible (by getting their grade up through the junior college programs). Obviously, these junior colleges serve as a kind of farm system for certain SEC schools. They also keep those kids from signing with other programs.

Because the numbers were getting out control, a few years back the SEC passed a rule that no more than 28 players could sign with any conference member in any given class. However, early could be added to that total, so that the numbers could actually grow to 33 or so. I might not be technically right about all this, but it's a pretty good gist, I think, of what's been happening.