Scholarship allotment issue - what the what?

[Stan R]

So I keep hearing we are under our maximum scholarship allotment in football by I think 18 of our max of 85. I'd like to start a thread on this topic specifically for a few reasons:

1.) Why are we in this state? Can I blame this on Todd Dodge like everything else? That would be my preference.

2.) Are there many (any??) other D1A programs with that much of a shortfall?

3.) How much is this affecting our team?

4.) What will it take to bring that number back up to the max? Maybe I'm just being simple minded, but it seems like you just go out and bring in 18 more that normal in a year and fix the problem. I'm sure it's not that simple, so what makes this a challenge?

Thanks I'll hang up and listen.

[BillySee58]

1.The unbiased truth is a lot of the blame is on Dodge for the JUCO players he brought in. A couple other contributing reasons are players transferring (although every team suffers from this) and last years implement of the 25 rule which prohibits you from signing more than 25 players a recruiting class, which does include transfers from D-1 and JUCO believe it or not. The main reason honestly was Dodge's JUCO overload.

2. Yeah other schools have this problem to a degree, but usually are not more than 5 under the 85 allotment. Schools like Alabama utilize the grayshirt with regularity to prevent from reaching the 85 maximum. Even when coaches are over the 85 allotment after signing day they usually say "the numbers will sort themselves out by spring" as players who are buried often transfer after or during spring and what's left can be dealt with by grayshirting a few freshman.

3. It is affecting our team a little from a depth perspective, but mostly because we have such a lack of a senior class. We only have about 11 seniors on scholarship and a good amount of those came here on scholarship and only 3 (Phillips, Cantly, and Feeley) are from the 2008 class that should have provided us with more than 3 players making it from signing day through their redshirt senior seasons. You can only go as far as your seniors take you, so it will be interesting to see how we do next year with a decent senior class.

4. Because you can only sign 25 scholarship athletes per class, which will include transfers like Berglund, you can't make up the deficit in one class. It shouldn't be long now until we are caught up as long as Mac keeps emphasizing the signing of high school kids and redshirting.

[ntmeangreen11]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Mac's first class have 6 or 7 that didn't show up or left the team?

[buff64]

1.The unbiased truth is a lot of the blame is on Dodge for the JUCO players he brought in. A couple other contributing reasons are players transferring (although every team suffers from this) and last years implement of the 25 rule which prohibits you from signing more than 25 players a recruiting class, which does include transfers from D-1 and JUCO believe it or not. The main reason honestly was Dodge's JUCO overload.

2. Yeah other schools have this problem to a degree, but usually are not more than 5 under the 85 allotment. Schools like Alabama utilize the grayshirt with regularity to prevent from reaching the 85 maximum. Even when coaches are over the 85 allotment after signing day they usually say "the numbers will sort themselves out by spring" as players who are buried often transfer after or during spring and what's left can be dealt with by grayshirting a few freshman.

3. It is affecting our team a little from a depth perspective, but mostly because we have such a lack of a senior class. We only have about 11 seniors on scholarship and a good amount of those came here on scholarship and only 3 (Phillips, Cantly, and Feeley) are from the 2008 class that should have provided us with more than 3 players making it from signing day through their redshirt senior seasons. You can only go as far as your seniors take you, so it will be interesting to see how we do next year with a decent senior class.

4. Because you can only sign 25 scholarship athletes per class, which will include transfers like Berglund, you can't make up the deficit in one class. It shouldn't be long now until we are caught up as long as Mac keeps emphasizing the signing of high school kids and redshirting.

Don't forget academic standards were the cause for the NCAA cutting our number of scholarships. Part of this was because of some players left school while they were not academically eilgible, but this was not the only cause.

[cwb]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Mac's first class have 6 or 7 that didn't show up or left the team?

Looks like only Greer and Swarn are not on the roster.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/footballrecruiting/football/recruiting/commitments/2011/northtexas-182

[NT03]

Looks like only Greer and Swarn are not on the roster.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/footballrecruiting/football/recruiting/commitments/2011/northtexas-182

Brooks ?

[cwb]

Brooks ?

True. Missed that one. Any others?

[H-towngreen]

I actually just posted something similar as a response to Harry's thread.

This is a huge issue. Our Senior class is non-existent. The Juco's, players leaving, and APR issues under Dodge are killing this program. Being that far under the allotted 85 provides no depth.

[GreenFlag]

So we only have 3 from Mac's first signing class not around. That is pretty solid.

[NT03]

Just looking at the past 2 signing classes , what ever happended to DQ Johnson ? I see he is on the roster , but I don't think I've seen him in a game yet.

Is he hurt or just can't make the 2 deep ?

[UNTLifer]

If the limit is 25 and we are well under the limit, why did Mac's first two classes only contain 21 players? Did walk-ons make up the difference?

[CurveItAround]

If the limit is 25 and we are well under the limit, why did Mac's first two classes only contain 21 players? Did walk-ons make up the difference?

FBS schools can only have a maximum of 85 scholarship players at one time. You can't sign 25 every year.

[UNTLifer]

FBS schools can only have a maximum of 85 scholarship players at one time. You can't sign 25 every year.

I understand that, but if we are so far under the limit, then why haven't we signed full classes?

[Cowtown]

I understand that, but if we are so far under the limit, then why haven't we signed full classes?

My guess is leave a couple ships open for stud late qualifiers or the random WR transfer from UT or the random QB from parts unknown

[JesseMartin]

I'm confused too; I haven't studied NCAA regulations like some of you have. Does this mean that we are currently playing with about 3/4 of a potentially full roster (67 vs. 85)?

Also on the academic issue...I admit I am glad for our level of strictness on issues relating to academics, drugs, etc. Though I would love to see a record like some of the big boys (Ohio State, USC, etc) usually have, I would absolutely not be okay with us playing fast and loose with the rules or turning a blind eye to violations, sacrificing our reputation in order to get more wins. One of the things I appreciate most about our athletic program is that we focus on citizenship and academics, rather than try to find loopholes. If the world were to judge us based on our number of wins, that's their choice, but I appreciate that, win or lose, we abide by honorable standards. I would rather play by the rules and lose than cheat and win (though winning fairly is a better proposition all around). I know this is only mildly relevant to filling our scholarships, but it certainly is a part of the issue.

[TIgreen01]

Blaming this all on Dodge's use of JUCO players is just dumb. I understand that our new coach's philosophy is to build with high school players, but if that means leaving gaping holes in the roster then I would place the blame squarely on our current coach. Should we sign 7-10 JUCO players to fill holes?? Probably not, but if one coach digs a deep hole, why not chip away at it instead of just flat using it as an excuse?? This isn't rocket science, it's football.

[CurveItAround]

I went and looked this up on the NCAA site: http://web1.ncaa.org.../aprRelease.jsp and searched for University of North Texas. The results showed that:

2006-2007 academic year UNT football had an APR of 917 which resulted in an immediate scholarship reduction of 5.

2007 - 2008 academic year UNT football had an APR of 911 which resulted in an immediate scholarship reduction of 6 (based on the footnote, it looks like the previous year penalty was waivered, but when we failed to bring the APR up, we received the orginal penalty of 5 plus an extra one).

Based on my interpretation (please correct me if I am wrong), this would have limited us to 79 total scholarships for the 2008 season and would have impacted the potential number of new scholarships we could award in 2008. However, when you look at the Rivals site, http://rivals.yahoo..../northtexas-182, it shows that we signed 26 new players to a national letter of intent (which by definition means we awarded 26 new full shcolarships). If we were on a scholarship reduction to a total of 79 for the 2008 season, we must have already been way under previously if we were able to sign 26 new players.

I could be misinterpreting how the penatly works, but it does not appear that we have received any new penalties due to APR since 2007-2008 academic year so I don't guess I understand some people's comments about how we are still feeling the effects of the scholarship reduction.

Edited October 29, 2012 by CurveItAround

[CurveItAround]

I did some follow on resarch for the last 5 recruiting classes that signed NLI's with North Texas (per Rivals).

2008 - 26 signed NLI, 3 still on roster (i.e. 5th year seniors). *sigh*

2009 - 20 signed NLI, 5 still on roster

2010 - 22 signed NLI, 12 still on roster

2011 - 21 signed NLI, 18 still on roster (counts Stojkovic)

2012 - 21 signed NLI, 21 still on roster

Based on this information, we have 59 players still on the roster that originally signed a NLI (received scholarship). I don't have a way of knowing how many players on the current roster that were previously walkons that have earned a scholarship, or transfers that received a scholarship.

Edited October 29, 2012 by CurveItAround

[glick1980]

Just looking at the past 2 signing classes , what ever happended to DQ Johnson ? I see he is on the roster , but I don't think I've seen him in a game yet.

Is he hurt or just can't make the 2 deep ?

I saw him get burned by 5 yards on a deep route against LSU I think, but the ball was badly overthrown. Have not seen him in there since.

[glick1980]

If the limit is 25 and we are well under the limit, why did Mac's first two classes only contain 21 players? Did walk-ons make up the difference?

We also had transfers that do count against the 25. From what I understand we have been at 25 signed the last two years including transfers.

[H-towngreen]

I feel like we've been under the scholarship limit since the Dickey days. I think that we have been in fact.

[CurveItAround]

I looked at the roster and it looks like we have the following transfers on the roster. Year listed is the first year they showed up on roster. I don't have a way of knowing which transfers are receiving a scholarship.

2011 - Trice (OU)

2011 - Feldt (Arkansas)

2012 - Pegram (Purdue)

2012 - Terrell (Texas)

2012 - Chelf (Iowa)

2012 - Caldwell (Kansas Wesleyan)

2012 - Hubbard (NE Ok St)

2012 - Igboeli (Tx Southern)

2012 - Brown (Miami, Oh)

[CurveItAround]

We also had transfers that do count against the 25. From what I understand we have been at 25 signed the last two years including transfers.

The ESPN site shows slightly different numbers than Rivals. The ESPN site shows 25 signees in 2012 and 24 signees in 2011.

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/football/recruiting/school/_/id/249/class/2012/sort/player/order/true

Since we already signed 25 players for 2012, I assume the transfers like Pegram, Terrell, Berglund, etc... are all having to pay their own way this season and we can put them on scholarship later (possibly as early as the Spring semester?). If anyone has any insight, please share.

As an example, Trice transferred in 2011, but he shows up as one of our 2012 signees.

[outoftown]

I did some follow on resarch for the last 5 recruiting classes that signed NLI's with North Texas (per Rivals).

2008 - 26 signed NLI, 3 still on roster (i.e. 5th year seniors). *sigh*

2009 - 20 signed NLI, 5 still on roster

2010 - 22 signed NLI, 12 still on roster

2011 - 21 signed NLI, 18 still on roster (counts Stojkovic)

2012 - 21 signed NLI, 21 still on roster

Based on this information, we have 59 players still on the roster that originally signed a NLI (received scholarship). I don't have a way of knowing how many players on the current roster that were previously walkons that have earned a scholarship, or transfers that received a scholarship.

59 players... ouff that really is lower than I thought.

Thanks for all the research... it is nice to have people looking and giving facts instead of only giving an opinion.

Edited October 30, 2012 by outoftown

[casual fan]

I get the feeling that a few fans would like to find some way to blame McCarney for the scholarship fiasco.

That blame is totally misplaced. He inherited the mess.

Signing a bunch of jucos for an instant fix without an eye to the future is one way to go, but it will bite you in the long run every time.

Edited October 30, 2012 by casual fan