Eleven Warriors

What once was a dirty Southern secret is getting a little bit more attention these days. Oversigning, besides being a tricky word to spell, is essentially the act of signing more recruits than you have room for on your roster. The SEC is particularly notorious for this, bringing in classes that often exceed 25 freshmen, and to make up for this, veterans are often told to hit the road under the pretext of an injury or take a grayshirt. For instance, in the last five years, Arkansas has signed 135 recruits to Ohio State's 99. Both teams have a roster limit of 85, so as you can imagine, there are quite a few former Razorbacks that didn't measure up in practice and were sent packing.

An Ozone commenter got things rolling, so to speak, by shining a light on the overlooked practice when he created oversigning.com in February of this year. The site does a great job of not only explaining the practice, but also aggregating and highlighting discrepancies and was spread via Twitter, blogs and college football message boards. In late November, the Wall Street Journal picked it up, featuring not just one, but two articles on oversigning and then things got real when oversigning made it to Wikipedia.

In case my explanation above was too muddled, here's Wikipedia's opener on the topic:

Oversigning (also spelled Over-signing) is a process in which American college athletics teams award to recruits a number of scholarships that, when added to the number of scholarships given to current members of the team expected to play in the next season, is greater than the maximum number of scholarships permitted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). While occasionally occurring in other sports, oversigning occurs most often - and has thus received the most attention from media members and fans - within college football (where the maximum number of athletic scholarships permitted in a season is 85).

While currently permitted within NCAA rules, many college football fans view oversigning as highly unethical, arguing that it requires schools and coaches to be dishonest with young adult and adolescent recruits.

Yesterday, ESPN featured the practice of oversigning on Outside the Lines. They tell the story of Chris Garrett, an LSU quarterback recruit that found out his scholarship was being yanked during voluntary workouts in the summer of his sophomore year. Adding insult to injury, Garrett received a certified letter from the university dated 11 days prior to when he had met with his head coach and all seemed well. Predictably, Miles refused to comment on the situation.

So bully to the Wall Street Journal, ESPN's OTL, oversigning.com and other outlets that are calling the SEC out for what it is: a conference that puts winning at football ahead of academics, the integrity of amateur athleticism (see: Newton) and the promises made to young men every February.

Finally, here's a look at the recruiting class sizes of Big Ten teams vs their SEC bowl opponents (2007-2010):

It must be nice to have what amounts to an entire additional recruiting class every four years.

LB Ryan Shazier has decommitted from Florida today after his official visits to LSU last weekend and Ohio State this weekend. He will be making his announcement later at his graduation party in the Miami area and will choose between the Bucks and Tigers.

Being that all signs pointed to this being a Gator-OSU battle after Urban Meyer resigned, expect Shazier to pick the good guys tonight. This would be a huge coup for OSU, as Shazier is a great player and will enroll early, along with his high school teammate and Buckeye commit, Jeremy Cash. He will most likely play the WILL linebacker position for OSU, but with his athleticism, I can eventually see him moving to the LB/DE hybrid LEO position later on in his career, a la Thaddeus Gibson.

Stay tuned later for the announcement from Shazier.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/bowls10/bracket

got the bucks to win it in my first try - nice!

okay, wow. i need 125 words in order to post a blog entry. hmmmm....

I know this pain
Why do lock yourself up in these chains?
No one can change your life except for you
Don't ever let anyone step all over you
Just open your heart and your mind
Is it really fair to feel this way inside?

Some day somebody's gonna make you want to
Turn around and say goodbye
Until then baby are you going to let them
Hold you down and make you cry
Don't you know?
Don't you know things can change
Things'll go your way
If you hold on for one more day
Can you hold on for one more day
Things'll go your way
Hold on for one more day

that should do it. thank you, wilson phillips. for everything. forever. signed, america - nay, the world.

 

USA Today released their annual FBS coaches salary index today and below you'll find the $2 million club (for all salaries, refer to the link).  Ohio State's Jim Tressel is the 6th highest-paid coach in the land, just behind Les Miles of LSU and just ahead of Iowa's Kirk Ferentz.

Some notes:

• Michigan's Rich Rodriguez is paid well -- $360k per win. Not nearly the heist he pulled the last two years, but still earning far more than he deserves to pocket (especially when you factor in the hidden costs of recruits not qualifying, transfers, NCAA investigations, etc.)
• Mack Brown has earned the right to be paid well. He's done a terrific job at Texas over the course of the last decade, but he takes the cake in terms of what he's paid per win. This year, as the Longhorns stumbled to a 5-7 record, he took home over a cool million per victory.
• Nick Saban is a very, very good coach. He's turned Alabama into a dominant player after 20 years of middling success, but is he worth nearly $6 million?
• Tennessee's Derek Dooley is easily FBS' highest-paid first year coach, but that comes with the turf when you take a job at one of the blue bloods of the college football world.

And here's the Big Ten's pay chart:

Notes on the Big Ten pay:

• Figures for Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald were not available as they are a private institution. He's rumored to be making somewhere in the $1-1.5M range.
• Bill Lynch, the lowest paid coach in the league, is gone. His successor, Kevin Wilson is thought to be getting $1.2M per year.
• As far as earning their pay this season, Dantonio and Bielema have done well, while Ferentz, obviously has not.

As an add on to yesterday's recruiting notebook, news came out that the Buckeyes have offered Cumming, GA long-snapper, Bryce Haynes. Haynes holds offers from UNC, Arkansas, and Utah State and is considered the nation's top at his position. The Bucks usually don't offer schollies to long snappers, so this kid must be good. With Jake McQuaide graduating, the position is up in the air next year, and don't undervalue it's importance. Haynes will take a visit to OSU on December 17th and don't be surprised if he commits while in Columbus.

Another player to watch is Chicago Simeon OL Chris Bryant. Bryant currently favors Michigan over Arizona, Stanford, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, and others, but an offer from OSU could change things. Dick Tressel has been to Chicago to visit Bryant and is expected back next week. Bill Kurelic also reported the coaches called him while he was on his visit to Arizona last week. Look for Bryant to potentially get an offer, a move that will help in recruiting his junior teammate, Jordan Diamond. Diamond is regarded as one of the top offensive linemen in the class of 2012 and has the Buckeyes high on his list of consideration.

[Ed: Bumped for history's sake. Edmund Morris would be proud.]

Probably the most useful information from this table is that I haven’t ruled a single completion as inaccurate or used the pressure category.  This means the data is most likely skewed towards the catchable category.  A more useful manipulation of the data can be found below.

I don't know if anyone saw this or not but it was featured in the Toledo paper today.  Apparently, Dane made a video for his marketing class during Ohio State's bye week.  His friend figured since they spent so much time on it they should post it.  In the first week alone it got over 35,000 hits.  In the video he makes fun of LeBron and the "Decision."  He uses it as a way of spreading the word about organ donation.  Jim Tressel makes a cameo talking about how Woody Hayes was probably an organ donor and he is also.   Not to mention Diebler, Heyward, Saine, Posey and Homan make an appearance.  I thought he did a great job on this video.  Hopefully, the NCAA doesn't suspend Dane for being seen in a tricked out Range Rover! Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKzOEM2RCmY

Completely ripped off from MGoBrian.  He explains his terms here http://mgoblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/hennechart-legend.html

Throwing

The first bad read was on 3^rd and 10 to begin the second quarter.  Michigan showed 7 at the line of scrimmage, Posey ran a slant on the short side and looked to have some space in front of him, Pryor threw to the outside.  The second bad read was to close the first half, the ball was thrown short into double coverage resulting in an interception.  On 3^rd and 10 with 9:21 remaining in the third quarter Pryor threw a pass that could have been placed in any one of catchable/inaccurate/bad read categories.  Michigan brings 6, the mlb and safety are on Herron out of backfield leaving Posey on the short side of the field and Sanzenbacher on a quick out to the wide side of the field in single coverage.  The ball grazed of Herron’s hands just behind the line of scrimmage, though I would bet Pryor wishes he had gone to one of his top two wide outs.

Two inaccurate passes, one on the first play from scrimmage severely under throwing Sanzenbacher on the deep out, the second an under thrown out to Corey Brown with around 13:27 left in the second quarter.

Dead on ball to Sanzenbacher for a touchdown, splitting two defenders while staring into the blitz.

Pryor made some big gains scrambling, and Michigan got to him once on a three man rush.

Posey returns from a rough day at Iowa with a big game against Michigan.  A week after dropping a season high 8 passes, there are 0 drops, and one spectacular leaping catch by Sanzenbacher over the middle.

This nest table is similar to what I think mgobrian is doing with his receiving chart but I am unable to find a link to his explanations so mine will have to do.  The first digit in the grade is from the receiver’s point of view, 4 easy to 1 impossible.  The second digit indicates the presence of the defender (1 there, 0 not there) at the time the ball hits the receiver’s hands.  When I say there, I mean close contact.

Therefore:

11        Bad pass, tight coverage.  Not sure if this will ever be used.

10        Bad pass, no defender to stop it

21        Really tough ball to catch and in tight coverage.  A catch on this means the receiver is saving his qb.

20        Really tough ball to catch, no coverage.

31        Ball outside the strike zone, tight coverage

30        Ball outside the strike zone, no coverage

41        Ball on the money, tight coverage

40        Ball on the money, no coverage

In this system I don’t know where to put the interception so it’s not included, neither is either throw away or the batted pass.  For the three of you who read these please let me know what you think of this new chart.  I think it gives a great picture of the day when combined with the first table on the page.

The 10’s were the first throw, plus the mix up with Posey on the post.  The 21 was Sanzenbacher leaping over the middle.  20’s include a diving catch by Saine behind the line of scrimmage, an underthrow to Corey Brown and the quick pass thrown in front of Herron.  31 is the ball thrown to Corey Brown in tight coverage in the end zone that may have been knocked down before it got to him.  41 was dead on to Sanzenbacher in the endzone, then lots of 40’s.

This just gives catches/opportunities by receiver.

As referenced by Luke in today's skull session it will be 2926 days since Michigan beat our beloved Buckeyes when the two old rivals square off next season.  2926 days, roughly 8 years, is a lot of time.  So I wanted to make a post to give us a little perspective here. 

-The freshman who will be on the sidelines next year were in 5th grade last time Michigan won the game.

-When the game is played next year, there will be 3rd grade Michigan fans who have never experienced the maize and blue knocking off the Buckeyes.

-The last victory Michigan had over the Buckeyes was probably watched by most on a TV witha tube, in standard def.  Some may have even used rabbit ears.

-We had no idea what a facebook or myspace page was, and tweeting was only done by canaries.

There are many other things I could include, but I don't want to be too big of a douche, and I feel these four items are significant enough to reflect on.  Here's to another 7 in a row! Go Bucks!!!!

Since there is a 125 word count minimum for a blog, I will have to fill in some dead space. Dang. I still need a few more words. Oh, there they are.

Top 10 Things Tougher Than Michigan's Defense

10. 1 ply toilet paper.

9.  A stuffed bunny, armed only with hugs and kisses.

8. Sneaking into Arizona.

7. Getting tickets to remaining Bengals games.

6. Trying to find a buyer in the Middle East for your left-over uranium.

5. Being a farmer from Iowa and having to choose between growing coffee or corn.

4. Finding a way to spend $100 cash at a strip club.

3. Coloring within the lines.

2. Determining if Sarah Palin knows more about guns or advanced economic theory.

1. Finding an unemployed Michigan grad.