A pre-Destin look at over-signing

Here's my Sunday story on the SEC's "roster management" issue. That means over-signing, grayshirting, medical exemptions ... the whole kit and kaboodle. But I tended to focus on over-signing.

An excerpt:

At heart, the issue is how cut-throat college football must be. And there isn’t much common ground.

On one side, you have those who oppose doing “whatever it takes.” Florida president Bernie Machen, in a February letter to SI.com, ripped into grayshirting and medical exemptions. Georgia head coach Mark Richt has called pulling scholarships for numbers reasons “an awful thing to do.”

...

On the face of it, the math would indicate that the head coaches -- virtually all of the Western Division, plus Spurrier -- would out-vote Richt and his like-minded friends. But the athletics directors and presidents have the final say.

Slive doesn’t have a vote, but he has a view, as he pointed out, and it’s unlikely that he would put forth legislation without having a good idea of how it will fare.

While Slive won’t achieve any consensus among the coaches, he will try to get the administrators to agree on an overall plan. The easier task will be getting an agreement on the SEC overseeing medical exemptions; but further limiting signing classes and gray-shirting will be a tougher task.

I'll be in Destin this week and will provide updates on these and any other key issues.