SoCon 2023 Signing Classes

[furmandad]

If my numbers are correct, Samford signed 17 in their class of ‘23. 9 are transfers. Transfer U.

[apaladin]

Not surprising.

[FUBeAR]

If my numbers are correct, Samford signed 17 in their class of ‘23. 9 are transfers. Transfer U.

At this point, that is WAY down from last year per FUBeAR’s 2022 vs. 2021 Roster Comparison Analysis…

Team: Samford
# of Returning Players: 71
Total # of Players Departed: 46
# of Players Departed with Eligibility Remaining: 31
Total # of New Players: 49
# of New Players who are Inbound Transfers: 25
Total # of Transfers on Roster: 38

[The Jackal]

Samford is committed to this approach - or at least has been. Still seems risky to me to rely heavily on the transfer portal to build a program. It can pay dividends (as we saw for them in 2022), but it can leave you high and dry if the pieces don’t fall into place.

[FUBeAR]

Samford is committed to this approach - or at least has been. Still seems risky to me to rely heavily on the transfer portal to build a program. It can pay dividends (as we saw for them in 2022), but it can leave you high and dry if the pieces don’t fall into place.

Yeah - still the same % for Samford - about 50% of new Players being Transfers.

Overall, roster ‘churn’ (Columns 3 & 5 below) seems as if it may be down this year (at least in the SoCon) compared to last year, when the average was 40+ ‘Churned’ Players/Team. We saw some really big Departed & New numbers last year. These came from looking at rosters at the end of July 2022 though. Could see the ‘churn’ kick in after Spring Practice. WCU, CIT, Mercer, and Samford were all well above average. So, not a great predictor of short term outcomes. We would need to see if those churn numbers continue and then look across at least 3 or 4 years (at least) to know if High Churn / High Transfers can be an effective strategy in the current FCS Football ecosphere. Of course…that ecosphere looks very different now than it did 3 or 4 years ago (Covid, NIL, Portal) and it could be equally as variant 3 or 4 years from now. So, as always… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Column 1 - Team Name
Column 2 - # of Returning Players
Column 3 - Total # of Players Departed
Column 4 - # of Players Departed with Eligibility Remaining
Column 5 - Total # of New Players
Column 6 - # of New Players who are Inbound Transfers
Column 7 - Total # of Transfers on Roster

Chattanooga 57 39 22 27 16 36
ETSU ? ? ? ? ? ?
Furman 75 34 23 33 5 6
Mercer 57 41 34 59 11 16
Samford 71 46 31 49 25 38
The Citadel 66 46 41 57 13 14
VMI 84 23 16 33 0 0
WCU 58 57 42 65 16 35
Wofford 78 33 11 35 6 ?
TOTAL 546 319 209 358 92 145
8 Team AVG (rounded) 68 40 26 45 11 18

[FUPlayer74]

One telling thing, nobody wants to transfer to VMI.

[FUBeAR]

One telling thing, nobody wants to transfer to VMI.

No grad programs - so they don’t have fake, fake soldiers on their Teams as the bellhops do. All of VMI’s Athletes have to be real, fake soldiers.

I do know of 1 Player that transferred from Vandy to Air Force, but it’s gonna be super few & far between to find a Soph or Jr in college that is willing to do the 1st year crap at a military academy - real or fake.