because saban works his roster like an NFL program ... and that's not necessarily a good thing for the recruits and families that buy into his "NFL development" pitch. Nobody works his roster like wee man does. saban uses the timing of the 85-limit as a loophole ... and that loophole is ripe for abuse. It treads in the grey area regarding ethics. The 85 limit cutoff is in August .... so if bama signs 27 players, they will need to "process" a number of players to get down to the 85 total limit by the time fall semester starts. Essentially .... they're considerably over the limit all spring/summer ... and if anybody they can afford to lose gets injured it's a forced cut if it occurs prior to fall ball. the challenge with bama is that they never acknowledge any roster numbers and the in-state media knows better than to ask. Unlike all other D-I programs, bama doesn't make this info public. they use a combination of transfers (sometimes forced) and medical hardships which do not count against the 85 scholarships and by processing-out those whose scholarships they don't wish to renew. "Be productive or there's the door." Systematically abusing the roster limits in this manner allows saban to continually have a full 85 player roster every year .... essentially giving bama 5 recruiting classes every 4 seasons. The players become cannon fodder in such a system and my beef has less to do with bama and more to do with the NCAA for allowing it. this isn't anything new for bama. Before 1977, schools were allowed to offer as many scholarships as they could financially support, which the great bear bryant used as a way to stockpile talent in an effort to deny recruits to competing programs. bama wasn't the only program to do this, just one of the biggest abusers. to curb the practice, scholarship limits were implemented by the NCAA beginning in '77 when the 95-limit was established. It was that way until '93 when they dropped it to 88, and then it changed to the 85-limit in 1994. Scholarship awards for football changed from 4 yr. agreements to annual agreements in '73.
Thanks Cadillac for the help. I remember the big deal last year about "Over-signing" and LSU had the bullseye and how the SEC made a hard rule that you can only sign 25 players and they were leading the charge etc. Yet I see Bama is already 2 and possibly more over that 25 limit I am like "Well nothing changed"
