We don't have scholarships to wAste
If he's a graduate transfer, he wont be wasting anyone's schollie. He gone before 2018 class gets here.
counts as an initial counter and would decrease the available EE's for the 2018 class to count against the 2017 class by 1.
Once again, a partially incorrect assessment of how grad transfers and initial counters interact. It's nothing personal, it's just that some people look at one rule and ignore another rule.
First, there has not been one person who has yet proven that we have any room to "count backwards", since most people ignore the fact that we lost 9 initial counters during probation. Some people just look at the number of signings and assume we can count backwards as if we intentionally undersigned. We did not.
Second, people ignore one of the best rules, "the midyear replacement rule", where a January enrollee can essentially replace a December graduate without counting as another "initial counter". That rule is supposed to "reward" schools that graduate kids early, but it can only be used if we are at 85 scholarships.
If we stay below 85 scholarships because we are trying to provide for "one more" initial counter in the next year, we can't use the "midyear replacement rule" at all. For instance, we might have 3 players who graduate in December, and we could "replace" them with 3 January enrollees, but if we are not at 85 scholarship players, then we can't use the rule.
We can go around and around about this forever, but it seems like Richt is going to do everything he can to get to 85 players by taking transfers AND grad transfers, regardless of trying to game the IC rules to go over 25 signees. All indications are that we will only go over 25 when we have midyear graduates. Getting back to a hardcore group of 85 (i.e., mostly HS signees, not a ton of transfers/grad-transfers) is going to require solid retention of Richt signees.
There's no magic of "prior year undersigning" to save us. We lost 9 scholarships AND 9 IC spots. The rules incentivize being at 85 scholarships, not staying underneath to try to attain the Holy Grail of a 30 person signing class. If we need grad transfers to get to 85, Richt is going to do it, he's going to focus on getting guys to graduate in December in order to exceed 25 signees, not saving scholarships for a whole year and remaining below 85.