Dave Doeren: ‘The NCAA has completely failed us as coaches with our roster management’

During his signing day press conference yesterday, Dave Doeren expressed his frustration over the rather half-assed way the NCAA addressed the inevitable roster crunch that would come with granting every player a free year of eligibility due to COVID-19.

Super seniors didn’t count against the 85 scholarship limit last season, but that was a one-year exception. That’s why NC State’s 2022 class is as small as it is.

Doeren:

The NCAA has completely failed us as coaches with our roster management. I’m sure they thought it was a great idea during COVID to reward everybody with an extra year, and I can see why. I feel like the model we had last year to allow the super seniors to not count in our 85 was the right model.

To say that’s a one-year deal but you awarded it to five years of players is not a good situation to be in as a football coach.

You are either recruiting fewer players, which means the future of your program isn’t how you want it... which hurts the high schools. The number of high schools I’ve went in to where players have nowhere to go because of this rule, it’s sad. It’s really sad.

It increases the number of guys who want to stay. It changes our ability to predict attrition.

The NCAA really screwed this one up. That’s my opinion, and they probably don’t care what my opinion is. I hope there is some relief at some point to help the high school kids go who have nowhere to go.

There was a better way to go about the whole thing than saying “these guys don’t count against your scholarship total” one year and then returning to the 85-scholarship cap the next, as if everything would magically be back to normal when obviously it was going to be a multi-year process for the ripple effect to work itself out.

College football programs got a one-year solution to a multi-year issue, creating unnecessary headaches in a situation where high school players end up as collateral damage as a result. The NCAA maybe should have spent more than five minutes thinking about this.