in an effort to provide an immediate influx of scholarship talent to their depleted roster for the 2015 season, Beaty signed a full recruiting class last year, but he didn't stop there. beyond the 25 member recruiting class, he convinced at least 8 recruits (nobody outside their staff seems to know the exact number) to accept an informal "blueshirt" deal whereby they would ostensibly walk on to the program but then be put scholarship as soon as classes began. this is allowed by ncaa rules if your team is under the scholarship limit of 85 and if the players are not "recruited athletes". the blueshirts immediately count against the overall scholarship limit but can be counted forward as initial counters to the next year. the definition of a "recruited athlete" is not clear to me...certainly the recruit can't be brought in for an official visit and they can't sign any letter of intent or scholarship agreement, but outside of that I'm not sure what level of contact coaches can have before a recruit is considered recruited.
the players brought in as blueshirts were a mix of high schoolers, juco transfers, and transfers from 4-year schools. among the group was a senior graduate transfer DT from Miami named Corey King, a junior graduate transfer WR from Virginia Tech named Stanford, and another WR transfer from UAB named Perdue. King was 1x1, Stanford was 2x2, and Perdue was 3x2 and had to sit out this past season. All three will be included as initial counters in ku's 2016 recruiting class, but none of them will be on the roster for the 2016 season. King's eligibility has expired, and Perdue and Stanford have both recently left the program. at a time when they are struggling to fill out their roster with legit scholarship players and initial counters are more precious than ever, Beaty used three of them on players who won't be on the team at all next season.
the players brought in as blueshirts were a mix of high schoolers, juco transfers, and transfers from 4-year schools. among the group was a senior graduate transfer DT from Miami named Corey King, a junior graduate transfer WR from Virginia Tech named Stanford, and another WR transfer from UAB named Perdue. King was 1x1, Stanford was 2x2, and Perdue was 3x2 and had to sit out this past season. All three will be included as initial counters in ku's 2016 recruiting class, but none of them will be on the roster for the 2016 season. King's eligibility has expired, and Perdue and Stanford have both recently left the program. at a time when they are struggling to fill out their roster with legit scholarship players and initial counters are more precious than ever, Beaty used three of them on players who won't be on the team at all next season.
