Are the number of available scholarships easily manipulated?

[El Paso Eagle]

Just wondering. Example - the comments out here (El Paso) had been UTEP only had 16 "open" slots. Today they signed 27 (according to the UTEP website). The coach has also said he is looking into adding Grad transfers.

Perhaps they have a lot of transfers??

My question - Is it that easy to manipulate the system?

Thanks

[MGNation92]

15 hours ago, El Paso Eagle said:

Just wondering. Example - the comments out here (El Paso) had been UTEP only had 16 "open" slots. Today they signed 27 (according to the UTEP website). The coach has also said he is looking into adding Grad transfers.

Perhaps they have a lot of transfers??

My question - Is it that easy to manipulate the system?

Thanks

Littrell has done it every year he's been here. You're granted 25 a year for signees, and we've consistenly been signing 18-20 every year. I'm not sure the limitations on blueshirting, but in theory you could sign 50 total for a class and blueshirt 25 of them. All the blueshirts would count against the following years class.

I do believe unused scholarships carry over, so if they only signed 20 last year, they'd have 5 more scholarships to work with, giving them 30 this year to play with(I'm not sure on this).

[BillySee58]

2 hours ago, MGNation92 said:

I do believe unused scholarships carry over, so if they only signed 20 last year, they'd have 5 more scholarships to work with, giving them 30 this year to play with(I'm not sure on this).

You're correct. An important note is that in order to backcount a scholarship to fill an empty spot from the previous class, the player being backcounted has to enroll in the spring or earlier.

In example, if you signed 23 in 2018 and wanted to sign 27 in 2019, 2 of your spots would need to be on high school players graduating a semester early and enrolling in spring 2019, JUCO players enrolling in spring 2019, or FBS transfers enrolling in either fall 2018 or spring 2019. Those players would all normally count towards the 2019 class, but their initial counters could go back towards the 2018 class.