Purdue Football Recruiting: Fear Not the Scholarship Grid

I understand it’s that time of the football year where everyone is pouring over the potential scholarship grid and going “OH MY GOD, WE’VE GOT TOO MANY PLAYERS!”

Fear not friends, I’m going to let you in on a little secret, and it will hopefully soothe your scholarship grid fears....

The coaches know exactly how many scholarships they have available.

They know who is leaving, right now, even if that information hasn’t been released yet, the coaches know. If it looks like we have too many players, or that we don’t have room for a certain WR from Kentucky, I say to you, fear not.

While speculation over who is leaving is pointless, because these guys are going to leave even if we don’t guess their names, if you’re really interested in making an educated guess on who might be leaving, I recommend going through the position groups currently on the team, looking at the recruits we just signed, and figuring where we have extra people.

Once you figure out where we have bodies superfluous to our needs, look for guys sophomores or juniors who haven’t made it into the 2 deeps yet, and you will have at least an idea of the possible transfer targets.

Now, will all of those guys transfer?

No

Some will stay, and some of the guys we think are dead wood on the scholarship tree will bloom into contributors as juniors and seniors.

Will there be a surprise defection or 2?

Probably

Will it be the end of the world?

No

Are the coaches going to “cut” players?

Nope, that’s a bad game to play. You want everyone who leaves the program to leave on good terms. If you want to get kicked out of a high school, a region, or even a state (in terms of recruiting), start cutting kids and you’ll accomplish your goal.

I promise you, every player that wants to stay will be on the roster next year.

Have the coaches had honest conversations with the returning players?

Yup, and some of those conversations were brutally honest.

There is a big difference between, “Turn in your playbook and hit the road” and “I don’t see you getting playing time in our program, if you want to leave, we will help you find a home where you can better reach your goals.”

So anyway, don’t freak out, the coaches know exactly what they are doing.