Decisions around a football student-athletes’ playing time and roster management thickening the plot.
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Two Years In, the New Division I Football Redshirt Exception is Taking Shape & Starting to Reveal New Motives Around Playing Time and Roster Management
Executive Summary
Division I adopted new rule effective in 2018 that permits football student-athletes to compete in up to 4 games without using a season of competition
Eligible Division I student-athletes may compete in up to four seasons of competition in their sport within a five-year period
Football student-athlete health & safety, as well as academics and retention, are primary drivers behind the new redshirt rule
Decisions around a football student-athletes’ playing time thickening the plot
Part II of feature on football redshirting...
Although worlds apart in many respects, the intentional sitting of star college football student-athletes to preserve the talent core for next season bears a slight resemblance to an NBA team tanking its games in the latter half of the season in order to increase its NBA lottery chances for the No. 1 draft pick. In the NBA Draft Lottery, the teams with the worst records have the correspondingly highest odds for a top draft pick. Tanking games is an especially appealing tactic when you see a Zion Williamson or LeBron James waiting in the NBA Draft green room.
And although Division I football certainly does not have a draft-lottery, at least one football program has been chronicled for opting to pull starters from the starting rotation to save them for next year after the team stumbled to a 1-3 start.
If a football program, off to a rocky start, finds itself sitting starters for a future season under the new parameters of the football redshirting rule, it would be interesting to see how the timing of that decision coincides with the remaining years on a head coach’s contract.
And the new redshirt rule could run head-on with a student-athlete's plans after college. What about the student-athlete’s academic path and career aspirations outside their sport? Some star football student-athletes may not be NFL material and, noting the well-chronicled physical toll football takes on a player's body, football student-athletes asked to sit and come back for another season (and the intervening spring practice sessions and summer access training) may not want to heed a Head Coach’s request to sit and return for more. A football student-athlete may want to play out the current season (despite a slow start for the team), earn his degree and move on in life.
The decision to sit under the new football redshirting rule could also be spun 180-degrees, though. That is, who is really making the decision to sit? A Head Coach controls who goes into games. What happens when a student-athlete does not want to go into anymore games this season?
A star football student-athlete who isn’t liking how the first few games have played out for the football team may tell the Head Coach,“Sorry, Coach, but I’m sitting the rest of the year.” This puts everyone on the team and in the program in an awkward spot for weeks to come. The student-athlete’s individual situation can certainly dictate the motives. One possible motive could include the student-athlete's long-term goal of saving the season of competition at his current institution to then transfer to another institution after the season concludes and use the remaining season(s) there.
Despite some of these potential unintended, if not acute, scenarios playing out, the new redshirt rule for football has generally been well-received for its intended purposes: giving more football student-athletes playing time without concern of preserving a season of competition in support of the team's usable depth chart and more substitution options for the Head Coach to enhance health and safety for all. Concurrently, the new redshirt rule also give reserves more coveted playing time to keep them engaged and motivated.
This new rule serves as a pressure-release valve for football---a sport with practice and training that extends well into spring and summer (not just the traditional fall season). This collective flexibility aligns with health and safety considerations. A few more years’ data will hopefully decipher whether this new rule has caused transfer-rates in football to down-turn; whether injury prevention has been buoyed; and whether football student-athlete retention rates and progress-toward-degree have increased.
Other impacts from the new redshirt rule in football range from roster management to the record books.
The long-standing nomenclature of “redshirting” (which isn’t an official NCAA-defined term) simply has meant that a student-athlete has avoided using one of his or her four seasons of competition. If a football student-athlete, whether by design or by accident, only plays in three or four games each season across his first four seasons, he technically has not used even one season of competition.
This new football rule could conceivably allow a student-athlete to redshirt (or avoid using a season of competition) in four straight seasons. Eligibility-wise, NCAA rules permit a student-athlete a five-year clock to fit in their four seasons of competition. Head Coaches will have to be mindful of student-athletes presumptively planning to return for their fifth year of enrollment to compete because they have season(s) of competition left to burn when, in fact, the football program has planned to move on. Remember, there is no constitutional right to play sports, or more acutely, to be granted playing time.
A Head Coach may be planning to use a graduating student-athlete’s athletics scholarship for a new recruit when, in fact, that same graduating student-athlete has a season of competition left to use. What may come to pass is the university non-renews the scholarship for permissible, non-medical and non-athletic performance based reasons under the terms and conditions of the athletics scholarship. Or a university may have scripted at the outset the student-athlete's athletics scholarship to run for no more than four academic years. The commuication between the football program and its graduating seniors with seasons of competition remaining in light of the new redshirt rule becomes even more vital as it pertains to roster management and staying on the same page.
From a records book standpoint, things could get interesting, too. A football student-athlete playing running back could generate several touchdowns and rushing yards in four-games and then sit the rest of the season to preserve his season. This notion isn’t completely novel in that a football student-athlete suffering a season ending injury or illness could have potentially played in four contests, generated various team and individual stats, and then been granted a medical hardship waiver to use that season of competition again provided the student-athlete's circumstances fit within the hardship numerical criteria. Perhaps the new normal will be Division I football student-athletes essentially playing “four and one-third” seasons in the years ahead if they take advantage of the new redshirt rule at least one time during their enrollment.
The modern-day football redshirt storyline only has a couple of chapters to its name. Interestingly, the NCAA national office is presently conducting a survey with member schools to solicit feedback on the impacts of the new football redshirt rule.
In the end, the new provision is well-intended and flexible with the student-athlete’s academic and health in focus. How the rule might be utilized in the years ahead is a story yet to be told and something to ponder as football's spring practice rolls on.
Athletics Veritas is presented for information purposes only and should not be considered advice or counsel on NCAA compliance matters. For guidance on NCAA rules and processes, always consult your university’s athletics compliance office, conference office, and/or the NCAA.
