The Jackal wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 6:50 am
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