Quite a few comments about bringing us back to prominence, or at least more competitive, by holding back the strong teams thru financial and coaching restrictions, but more commonly, by dispersing the talent pool by implementing a lower scholarship cap. In years past, cutting available scholarships has been used by small schools as a tool to push talent down to them, with cuts from something like 110 slots to 95, and then 85 coming to mind. This may have helped to some degree in the past, but apparently it didn’t work as planned as the issue is still on the table.
Another aspect about going down such a rabbit hole, especially if we went to 65 mentioned in notes here, is the wear and tear on the remaining players. At that level, once you’re impacted by injuries, transfers, and recruiting mistakes, the players still standing would have little room for error, little time for rest, and be forced to endure the rigors of a potentially very long season. Don’t compare this to the smaller NFL teams, for as you know, they have the free agent market to replace downed players. Schools don’t have such a backup plan, so if you followed such a recommendation, I think the end result would probably follow the path we’ve seen in previous player reduction efforts, but all the more, put the few players having to carry the weight of a season in physical danger.
Rather than try to tear down the successful, I think our better chances would come if we had the right coach to take advantage of the talent abundance at our doorstep.
