Scholarship Limit Rule: Unreasonable

In case you haven't heard, the SEC decided to cap the number of football signees that one member institution can sign at 28. I think that's totally unreasonable, and it will lead to some bigger issues than many fans realize.

Find out about it after the jump.

Limiting scholarships to 28 means fewer players signing. That means that the coaches will take fewer academic risks. Sure, some would argue that schools shouldn't be taking those academic risks anyway, but tell that to Michael Oher and Peria Jerry.

Granted, this won't hurt scholls like Florida very much, since those schools don't have to deal with prospects who don't qualify (due to selectivity of recruiting), but it hurts all the schools that do have to go after academic question marks (see: every other school in the SEC).

Also, 28? Why not 30? Capping the signees at 28 means that if four don't qualify, you don't have a fifth to swoop in for that free scholarship. This could impact whether teams look to sign baseball players as well, though I assume that impact will be small.

More than anything, this means that more players who are academic question marks will be signing with schools like FIU, Southern Miss, etc. While most of those guys won't qualify, some will. I think we're about to see a rise out of some of the smaller southern schools in terms of recruiting classes, and that should yield to an improvement of those schools across the board. but more than that, it translates to a possible weakening of the SEC. For years, the league has thrived off of incredible players who barely qualify. Sure, those guys will still sign with SEC schools, but not as many of them. We're going to have to deal with more sure things and fewer incredible athletes who just didn't care about their grades.

Needless to say, even if I weren't an Ole Miss fan, I would be upset by this ruling. However, to say that Houston Nutt signed an unreasonable amount of players is, at least somewhat, uninformed. How was he supposed to know that 20 of the remaining 21 or so players on the board would sign with Ole Miss? He can't be blamed for that. What was he going to do? Tell the other guys to go sign somewhere else?