RJM posted:Only if a D3 coach tells the player to apply ED while he walks the application through for him is the player a legitimate recruit. Coaches tend to get 6-8 of these slots per year. Everyone else is rolling the dice and can’t be counted in the attrition rate.
If people remember 3rdGen (son is now 26) he told me at his son’s D3 27 players showed up for two roster spots all thinking they were preferred walkons.
I'm not sure even those who apply ED would count as "legitimate recruits" rather than just "preferred walk ons." Everybody at a D3 is essentially a walk-on, preferred or not.
That's partly because LOTS of D3 guys, even guys who end up playing, have hopes of playing above D3 and they hold out committing to a D3 until the last possible minute. And sometimes those guys are better players than anybody who was admitted ED or (more likely) Early Action guys. They are often very good plays but not guys who were "aiming" for D3 as their first choice.
I mean here in California, where there are only 9 D3 programs total -- only 8 of them at all competitive, and only 3 or 4 of them regularly "nationally ranked" not many really good HS players -- of which there are a boatload -- start out thinking D3 or bust.
Consequently, with many a D3 programs, you simply don't know where you really stand until you see who else shows up in the fall. And that's especially true with those D3's, like my son's, that regularly recruit drop downs and JC transfers, in addition to a ream of frosh.
For example, a teammate of my son's was wait-listed at a very high academic D3. But he didn't decide to go there until very late in the game. He made the team in the fall, even though he was probably one of the last players "recruited." He was not an ED guy.
Another teammate was admitted to a D3, maybe EA, where the baseball coach really wanted him. But he thought he could do better. He decided to go the JC route for a year to see if he could get some D1 love ... which, again, he really, really wanted. After two years at JC, he ended up at a (different) D3 school. Where he started and starred for his last two years
Point is that lots of guys who end up going to D3 don't start out aiming at a D3, so wouldn't commit to a D3 early in the process.
That's a long winded way of saying I just don't think you can exclude from the attrition measure all the guys who spend a year in a program. It doesn't really matter by what path they got there. If they spend a year in the program but end up not in it by senior year, they count toward attrition.