Scholarships and Head Count

Paul and I have a running email discussion about what is going on with the size of the roster. He's written about recruiting plenty over the years. Both of us routinely refer to Dean Legge's Recruiting Manifesto, which if you haven't read in a while, now is a good time to brush up. Until this weekend, I thought his rantings about Richt's recruiting numbers were asinine. I now know just how much I had my head in the sand.

Simply put, Georgia is about 15 scholarship recruited players down because we routinely under-sign. We are voluntarily operating at a 20% discount. Think about that. When Paul said that the other day, I scoffed. Surely you jest. We sign right on the money every year. Mark Richt isn't into pulling a Saban and letting accountants and attrition work out those pesky numbers. He believes in making a promise to a kid that  if you decide to come to Georgia, you will be given a spot in this year's class. Which is the honorable and right thing to do.  

However...and there always is a however...I now agree with Paul that we undersign. How is that? I'm glad I asked. While we always nearly always hit our 'target' number of scholarships, except for 10 and 12. And 07.   And 05. What was I ranting about? Oh, yeah. We can be honorable and still sign the number of players it takes to field a full team of scholarship players (or at least close to a full team of scholarship players).

Are the coaches too worried about recruiting rankings? If that is what it is, shame on us a little. Yes, us the fans. We are the ones driving that train. Yes, the coaches could actually stand up and say we don't care about that, but they'd do so at the risk of sounding both 'in the arenaish' and 'shut the hell up I know what I'm doing'ish.' Neither are optimum.

Looking at AirForceDawgs excellent compilation of information on DawgRun (h/t Blutarsky), it isn't hard to see that we have averaged over 6 departures per season (I took the 32 departures and divided by 5 seasons). Now, some of those are less predictable, such as violation of team rules (I count seven). Nonetheless, you can count on those spots being open. They should be more effectively utilized, even if it means we are finishing outside the top 5 in recruiting rankings. I believe if we'd recruit some kids harder and earlier we'd find more success with the players that often times wait until February for ESPN airtime to decide.

If you read the comments on Blutarsky's post from last week, you'll see this situation being called a self imposed probation. I'd say it is worse. I think it is digging your own grave just to show you can handle a shovel. I respect what Coach Richt is doing in being honest with players when he tells them they will have a place in Athens if they decide to come to Georgia. I don't respect his inability or unwillingness to project what his real numbers will be based on natural attrition, some of which is easily predicable.

The only upside is that it looks like we are in line to have multiple guys report early for the upcoming class, which allows us some leeway in signing a huge Class of 2013. The problem is we are literally playing with Mississippi State Jacksonville Jaguar level depth in Fall 2012. We have to have production and health out of the 70 or so we recruited.

TD

PS. It occurs to me much is being made out of the five guys that have earned walk-on schollys. All of them are contributors that deserve scholarships and are exactly the kind of players that we could be recruiting on the backend to help with depth. All five have grown into their playing time and are more than mere placeholders for scholarships.

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