Answer Tuesday!

In this segment, a question about whether USC should sign more recruits than it has scholarships.

Q: sctrojan84 said:
My question is in regards to recruiting. I read/watched a fantastic piece on ESPN on signing players over-the-limit of yearly limits (and how it is a major issue in the SEC, of course). My understanding is that you can sign as many players as you want, but can only carry a max of 25 going into the season (15 for the next three years for USC).

In this situation (with sanctions and subsequent, unresolved appeal), even though SC historically is very good about not over-signing (which can leave a player in a bad situation scrambline for a college at the last minute)- would it make sense to over-sign to about 22 players or so for Feb 2011 recruting class?

That way, it allows for the appeal process to play out and then can keep the 20 players if they happen to get lucky and win (with a couple extras for players that end up not qualifying or ask out of their LOI). Otherwise, even if they win the appeal, it would only really help them in 2 of the 3 years.

Thoughts?

A: USC’s athletic dept. policy for several years is that it does not allow its sports to oversign athletes. In fact, there’s even been times when it would not allow more than a certain number of letters of intent to be mailed out to avoid any chance of oversigning.
It’s one thing that separates schools from the SEC, where almost anything goes.