I won't link a story from the Freep, but it has Carlo Kemp's name in the title. Go find it if you want to... Essentially, Coach Harbaugh switched things up - football is no longer a meritocracy, its a cage match!
“We’re a total of 103 on the team,” he said. “There’s no difference between scholarship and nonscholarship to me. That’s the team, 103 right now. There’ll be 22 more coming. Plus preferred walk-ons coming as well. We’ve got to be 105 when we start training camp. Cage match to begin on Feb. 29.” ...
“It’s always a competitive thing is happening at whatever positon it’s at. That’ll be something that’s happening at quite a few positions. Might as well say all of them. Nothing’s set in stone. As we said, it is a meritocracy. Cage match. Let’s move from meritocracy to cage match.”