Oversigning: the Cliff Notes Version

I lost a long post on oversigning in the ether. Here is the outline for your comments. I'll either find or replace the flesh.

1. Oversigning is a rational response for a school like Ole Miss that is recruiting predominantly from a terrible high school system. They don't get a huge competitive advantage because grades and SATs are making roster decisions instead of the coaches.

2. Alabama and LSU have less of an excuse because they have the recruiting cache to be selective.

3. Georgia and Florida don't have to oversign because they have enough prestige to be selective, plus they recruit in states with better high school systems (relatively speaking) in comparison to most other SEC states. Also, they are in more urbanized states and have newspapers that would stay on them, which I don't see as the case in Alabama and Mississippi.

4. The key question in the oversigning debate is whether players are really cut. Does Nick Saban state, explicitly or implicitly, that departing players need to leave? Or does he just tell them something along the lines of "you're free to stay, but you aren't going to see the field" and then the players themselves decide to go because they want playing time. The answer to this question would come from a media outlet talking to the players in the Alabama diaspora (or doing the same for any school that oversigns). The media reporting on players being cut (if that is indeed the case) ought to be one check on the practice. Negative recruiting from rivals should be the other.