With back-to-back 2-4 bowl records, the question has arisen in the last two years as to whether the Big Ten is down as a football conference.

The conference recently took a big step towards rectifying that situation.

According to Scott Chipman, Big Ten associate director of communications, the Big Ten has passed a ruling to allow teams to "oversign" on national signing day. Starting next season, teams will be able to sign more players to scholarship than were lost the previous season to graduation, which they are not currently allowed to do. Chipman said that the rule has been passed, but is still in the legislative process. The Big Ten released no further comment, and Chipman would not explain the workings of the legislative process.

Under the current system, Big Ten teams often do not have their total allowed amount of 85 scholarship players on the roster by the beginning the season because of players that failed to qualify or players that were undecided going into national signing day in February who did not sign letters of intent that they received.

The new rule will allow teams to send out a few more scholarships than they have available, assuming that by the time the season begins, enough of those players will not be on the team so that the team is still under its scholarship limit.

However, the NCAA penalizes a team two scholarships in the next recruiting class for every scholarship player that team has over its limit.

If teams oversign and there is no attrition, teams can ask their extra players to walk on, or go to other schools. Partial qualifiers, who can practice and receive financial aid but can't play in games as freshmen, can be asked to attend junior college.

Several other conferences, including the Southeastern Conference and the Big 12, have practiced oversigning for years. According to SEC assistant commissioner Jim McCulloch, a team he would not name broke the limit three years ago, but no team has had a problem since. However, he said that the rule has allowed coaches to take chances.

"No coach knows how many of their players are going to qualify," McCulloch said. "By national signing day in February, the NCAA clearing house hasn't qualified these guys yet. If you offer 25 scholarships, and you find out only 23 of them qualify, you can't really go back out and try to get somebody because everyone's gone by then. This allows coaches to take a gamble on their qualifiers."

The cause was championed by Indiana coach Gerry DiNardo, who is in his first year at the helm for the Hoosiers. DiNardo spent four years as the head coach at Vanderbilt and five in the same position at Louisiana State, where he was able to oversign players. DiNardo and his staff introduced the legislation, and DiNardo lobbied faculty representatives.

"There's no way in most universities that you can manage your roster to be at 85 scholarships if you're not permitted to oversign and allow for no attrition," he said. "I don't know any program that has no attrition from the first Wednesday in February until the day freshman report. I think that creates a competitive disadvantage for the Big Ten as a whole in interconference play."

Other coaches also expressed their agreement with the ruling on yesterday's Big Ten teleconference.

"I think it's a positive change from the standpoint of being able to be on the same playing field with a lot of the teams in other conferences," Michigan coach Lloyd Carr said. "Especially when you look at our bowl hookup with the SEC in the Citrus and Outback Bowl, it's an important rule. I can remember going to bowl games with 77, 76 guys on scholarship against a team with 85 ... In bowl games against conferences that have an advantage of doing that, Big Ten teams were at a severe disadvantage."