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Michigan Football Signed More Players Than Almost Every Other School
Michigan football fans have long complained about the practice of oversigning in the SEC, but with 30 signees in the 2017 class, there’s no room to talk.
The only teams that singed more players than Michigan football in the 2017 recruiting class were Air Force and Army, who finished with 48 and 45 signees, respectively.
Michigan had 30 players sign on National Signing Day, one more than Alabama’s 29 and eight more than Ohio State’s 21.
According to the MGoFish scholarship tracker, Michigan is currently at 88 scholarship players.
This isn’t as troubling as it might appear. It isn’t uncommon for teams to come out of National Signing Day with more than the NCAA-allotted 85 scholarship players. Michigan did it last year too.
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Teams have until fall camp to get down to 85 scholarship players, meaning the Wolverines need to experience a little more attrition over the spring and summer months. The most common attrition (players graduating and/or going to the NFL) has already happened. Plus there are always transfers—like Shane Morris, who’s playing his fifth and final season at Central Michigan.
There are also reports of sophomore-to-be tight end Devin Asiasi wanting to transfer closer to his home in Mateo, California. That would obviously free up a spot. Then again, perhaps the coaching staff is trying to pull in someone like Aaron Cochran, a former California left tackle who announced that he’s transferring to play his fifth year somewhere else. As a fifth-year player, he would be eligible to play immediately.
That move would make sense, considering the Wolverines are losing three fifth-year offensive linemen—right guard Kyle Kalis, right tackle Erik Magnuson and left tackle Ben Braden—from last season’s roster.
There are two lessons to take away from these last two seasons, in which Michigan has signed a total of 56 players: Oversigning is not an SEC/Alabama problem, and you will be called a hypocrite before long if you continue to brand it that way.
Michigan’s going to get down to 85 scholarship players in the coming months by some method. That currently requires three more cases of attrition. We’ll see how it happens.
