SEC coaches favor 28-LOI limit for recruiting classes

Last week, details from Slive’s oversigning legislation were leaked, with one amendment asking the SEC to begin “Limiting the size of a football signing class in each academic year to 25, down from the current level of 28… The 25 limit would cover those who sign from Dec. 1 to August 1.”

The coaches felt a change in the status quo would limit opportunities for recruits.

“When you sit in our seat every day for 26 years, you see all the different things that could happen,” said Auburn coach Gene Chizik. “Are there some risk/reward chances you have to take on guys? Absolutely. Everybody across the country does it every year. Unfortunately, every school doesn’t recruit every single kid who is 300 points above the SAT and has a 3.0 GPA. That’s not realistic. We also want to give kids opportunities to be student-athletes as well.”

“You all are creating a bad problem for everybody,” added Nick Saban, who blamed the bad publicity surrounding oversigning on the media. “You’re going to mess up kids’ opportunities by doing what you’re doing. You think you’re helping ‘em but you’re really hurting ‘em. It took one case where somebody didn’t get the right opportunity. You need to take the other 100 cases where somebody got an opportunity.”