Shades of gray: Steve Addazio talks oversigning.

Count Florida’s former master recruiter as somebody who does nuance:

We’re hearing a lot lately about the issue of ‘oversigning’ in college football. What are your thoughts? Is this something that needs to be looked at more closely?

We were not an oversigning outfit at Florida. It just wasn’t something that we did. I know a lot of other programs did. They may take kids who are marginal as far as whether they were going to qualify, and then commit them in case they make the grades. And if they don’t qualify, they can then put them in a prep school. That’s something that some people practice at that higher level. But I think you ought to be very careful, ethically, so that you don’t [take a commitment] from a kid if you can’t come through with a scholarship. I don’t think you can do that. I don’t think you can promise a kid a scholarship if you can’t come through with it. But if you’re up front about it, then that’s their choice. It’s not something that should be forced on somebody. … You’re trying to create opportunities for people, but some kids put themselves in a situation that you have to work through with them to try and help them. As long as they are talked through properly, up front, you can usually make everything work.  [Emphasis added.]

You wonder if he’d be singing the same tune if he were still working in Gainesville.

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UPDATE: On the other hand, here’s somebody who describes early enrollment as a “loophole”.

And for all of you who think that school presidents always act independently of their coaches in setting academic and admissions policies, I’ve got news for you.  They don’t.

… Conversely, the Big Ten has taken a hard line on oversigning, which has been against that league’s rules since 1956.

The rule was amended in 2002 to allow programs to oversign their total scholarship allotment by three after Big Ten football coaches complained of fielding teams with fewer scholarship players than the 85 allowed by the NCAA due to attrition.  [Emphasis added.]

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UPDATE #2: I think it’s pretty silly reasoning (and given the news about Tatgate, you have to wince a little bit when Jim Tressel is being held out as some sort of paragon of virtue), but I thought I’d pass it along anyway – here’s John Pennington’s rationale for why the SEC will ban oversigning in June:

… The Big Ten (and other leagues) hold the moral high ground when it comes to oversigning and the powers that be in the SEC aren’t likely to allow other leagues to hold any kind of high ground — moral or otherwise — over their own conference.  For that reason, we expect the league to nix the practice.

The Big Ten has had its oversigning rule in place for more than half a century.  Exactly when did the SEC decide that it was working policy not “to allow other leagues to hold any kind of high ground”?