DESTIN, Fla. — In his four years as a head coach, Derek Dooley has never grayshirted a player.
It’s not because the Tennessee coach is against it. It’s just because he’s never had the opportunity.
“We were begging people to come at Tech,” Dooley said, referring to his three-year stint at Louisiana Tech.
“To get 28 was a real feat. I was nervous we weren’t going to get 10.”
Getting 10 at UT hasn’t been a problem for Dooley, as his past two signing classes have been 27 and 28 players deep.
But because of widespread attrition caused by back-to-back years of coaching changes, Dooley, in his first two years with the Vols, has never had the chance to “oversign,” the practice of bringing in more players on National Signing Day than there are available scholarships.
With proposed legislation on the table to potentially curb this practice with a number of limitations, including a cap of 25 players per signing class — down three from the current 28 — Dooley has largely sided with his coaching brethren on the hot-button topic at this week’s SEC spring meetings.
Dooley said he is against messing with the current cap of 28, which is three above the NCAA maximum of 25 that can actually be on scholarship for the following season, because it’s only been in place for two years. On Wednesday, after a meeting commissioner Mike Slive described as “spirited,” the league’s coaches unanimously voted against changing the current cap.
The league’s presidents and chancellors, though, get the final say and will vote on the issue Friday.
“You’re trying to find two or three difference makers on both sides of the ball and you generally never know who those guys are,” Dooley said.
“It might be that one guy you didn’t get because you’re full. If those two or three players were Cam Newton and Nick Fairley, then yeah, I will say it hurts your competitive level.”
Dooley is, however, in favor of “closing the loopholes” that have led to an increased number of cases where players have been unexpectedly grayshirted or forced off the team to free up a scholarship for someone else.
“I thought we had some good ideas that we presented,” said Georgia coach Mark Richt, who had previously been at the perceived forefront of the anti-oversigning movement, but has since backed off a bit from that platform.
“There’s more conversation and more process before things get spewed out over the airwaves. We’ll just see where it goes.”
Though it’s clear some ADs, presidents and coaches aren’t on the same page, Dooley and UT athletic director Mike Hamilton appear to have their philosophies in line.
Hamilton said there are cases where grayshirting a player is a win-win situation for everybody. And though football scholarships are technically granted on a year-to-year basis, Hamilton conceded that it’s difficult to run a kid off the program because it’s “a hard place to be, frankly, when you’ve committed to a kid.”
UT athletic director Mike Hamilton said he would sit down with David Blackburn, UT’s top football administrator, and go over all the details of the proposed legislation late Wednesday. On Friday, Hamilton said he will meet with chancellor Jimmy Cheek to discuss where the institution will stand on the issue.
“The coaches,” Hamilton said, “gave us some good things to think about.”
Oregon sends Lady Vols home from…
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Comments » 9
CHITOWNVOL writes:
grayshirting is shady. the article didn't seem to address the "oversigning" issue in enough depth. i think SEC should set up some more standards to prevent it. If not everone will just have to keep up with the Jonses and take part whether they like it or not
FWBVol writes:
If a coach is tells a kid up front that he might be be grayshirted that's one thing because the kid knows from the start that he might not be on scholarship his first year. But it's something entirely different that if on signing day the school is suddenly telling the kid they are over the scholarship limit and will have to grayshirt him.
By being up front with a kid from the get go the player has a chance to weigh his options and maybe accept a scholarship offer at a school that would have been a second or third choice rather than getting blind sided late in the process.
VolzsFan writes:
Hey DD, stop worrying about rules that will come into effect after you are run out of town. Focus on getting some real players since all of Phil's have been drafted or run off by Lane only to be drafted from other places. You need to forget that grand experiment of getting kids that had Central Florida, East Carolina and UAB as their other offers. You need to get real players. Next years beatings with the 11th ranked per game statistical QB you call Bray will get you one step closer to making way for the next guy to come and fail after the UT nation grew up with almost an average of 10 wins per year in the Hall of Famer's era. Start recruiting and stop worrying about things that do not matter.
CoverOrange writes:
What does 11:56, 1:13, and 3:25 have in common? Trollage, with no lives, not worth the time to respond to. Let's discuss greyshirting.
tmartin writes:
11th ranked?? Not bad, since he only played half as many games. Come on Phil, get over it.
springtx_vol writes:
And you want people to think you are a UT fan? Ain't gonna happen with that kind of language.
Further, if we are only getting players that UCF, etc., want, then how in the world did UT end up with 9th and 13th (according to Rivals) ranked classes the last two years? I don't see UCF, UAB, etc., ranked above us!
Yes, there were several SEC schools ranked above us. But we have had many, many discussions on the fallacies of number of stars for high school players. I am not going to make predictions, but let's see how the team does the next two years before we try to run Dooley off.
GBO
springtx_vol writes:
What about the kids that play with schools? Committing to one school and changing on signing day without notice.
There are a couple of ways out of this without draconian rules on oversigning.
One, set up a 2 week early signing period in August. Let the kids make decisions that want to, most of them probably will. Then there will be a lot less uncertainty come February signing day.
Two, the schools need to be open on exactly how many scholarships they have to offer. That means early decisions for players like Kevin Revis leaving for schools that they can actually play for. Then, everyone knows exactly how many opening there are.
Yes, none of this covers the players that end up not qualifying. A hard cap without oversigning means that a lot of those maybe qualifiers will not be recruited by the power schools or sign and place will go away (who cares about sign and place as long as the sign does not commit the player to the original university after CC).
dislikethemtrolls writes:
IDIOT STFU!!!!!!!!!
volcraze writes:
Thank you kind sir...kind of new here but now I know what this "troll" talk is all about. I had a more colorful name in mind but I'll go with troll.
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