http://instagram.com/p/cO7LVRomjb/
The multiple defections, dismissals and non-qualifiers during Charlie Weis’ short time as head coach of the Kansas University football program left the Jayhawks competing with a team that quantitatively is more like one from the Football Championship Division (1-AA) than the Football Bowl Subdivsion.
Although KU has encountered good fortune on the injury front compared to most teams, it still is practicing with only 63 healthy players who originally came to KU on scholarship.
Interestingly, 63 is the scholarship limit for FCS schools. The NCAA maximum for scholarship players on a roster is 85. Unlike in the FBS, the scholarships can’t be spread out with the use of partial rides. Every scholarship must be a full one. No more than 25 scholarships can be awarded in one year in the FBS.
How did it happen?
First, Weis ran off so many bad students and discipline problems that he couldn’t get the roster back to full size in one year.
Second, he tried to retool via the junior-college path and banked his hopes heavily on the so-called Dream Team of junior-college recruits, 16 of them members of the Class of 2013, Weis’ second of three recruiting classes. Only eight of the 16 remain in the program. Six jucos from that class — Marquel Combs (pictured above, via his instagram), Marcus Jenkins-Moore, Chris Martin, Kevin Short, Pearce Slater and Mark Thomas — never played a down. Samson Faifilli and Zach Fondal played, but left the program before exhausting their eligibility.
That’s far too many wasted scholarships.
Looking ahead to spring football, KU will have 50 players who arrived on scholarship, plus four walk-ons who earned scholarships (starters Joe Gibson, a center, and T.J. Semke, a defensive lineman, and reserve linebackers Beau Bell and Michael Zunica), plus any Class of 2015 recruit who graduates a semester early, if there is such a player, and enrolls at KU for the start of next semester.
Kansas can bring in 24 more players on scholarship. (Nigel King counted toward the Class of 2015 because of when he enrolled at Kansas). That brings the number of players on scholarship to 78, including the four original walk-ons. That figure assumes no players will transfer, not a likely outcome because a number of them must realize by now they don’t have the talent to fit make it onto the field at KU.
Most FBS teams have about 82 scholarship players at any given time and have more than 75 healthy players on a free ride practicing daily.
As lacking in ready-for-prime time players as this year’s team is, next season’s will be worse.
