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Are redshirts relevant anymore?

EastOfEden said:
Maybe I'm too influenced by the big name underclassmen who opt to go pro, usually the best players, but it makes me wonder if redshirting the better players makes any sense anymore. Particularly with the new Spring football league (this one probably has legs) will the better players hang around to use that extra year? Maybe NIL will keep them here, but I fear that four years of playing and developing will become the standard for the better players, red shirt or not. I would like to think I'm wrong.
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Relevant for who, would be my question?

For the player- Yes, it allows them to not waste a year of eligibility during a season they likely wouldn't play. Plus, redshirt rules are now where you can play a third of the season and still not use a year of eligibility. You still have a chance to get some experience and grow as a player, while adapting to college.

For the school- Yes, it allows them time to test drive players while also giving them adequate time to develop. It also gives you the chance to not burn a year of eligibility while a player is sitting behind a stud upperclassman.

Too often, fans make sweeping generalizations based on a handful of exceptions. We've seen a lot of players over the last few seasons not only playing 4 years, but 5-7 years thanks to the COVID year and redshirts. The guys who are no brainers as pros are going to head to the pros the first chance they get, in most cases. That number is not representative of the whole.

Especially at the talent rich schools, redshirting is very much alive and well.
 

A player has to be out of high school for three years, so if they want to play on Sundays its either as an incoming rs Jr or incoming Sr.

There's plenty of bad advice out there, but to go next level you can get good advice fairly easily. This may not effect those players that want to start day one, but thats still up to the coaches.
 
CrabHusker said:
The days of most Freshman coming in and redshirting are over.
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CrabHusker said:
The fact still remains that the redshirt 'as we knew it' is gone.
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CrabHusker said:
Of the 16 total scholarship redshirts, 8 are no longer on the roster. That's half of the '22 class scholarship players who were redshirted. Doesn't seem like hyperbole to me, seems like the 'half of the class'
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Could you elaborate a bit more on the math aspect? (Specifically the 2 of 21* being 50% part) Someone transferring out does not eliminate the redshirt and it’s been thst way for years. Guys transferring out that didn’t redshirt is also a thing… Earnest Hausman, Wan’dale Robinson, Adrian Martinez…Kids transfer because they can, not because they were forced to redshirt. Not counting a kid that can't play also doesn't remove him from the equation, and ignoring the boat load of walk on kids doesn't eliminate them using a redshirt.
Perhaps in the future, the redshirt will be a thing of the past. Currently it functions 'as we knew it'. Now, if you want to say the walk on 'as we knew it' was a thing of the past, you might be on to something. Or if you want to bring up the 4 game window, New Years Bowl Games, NIL, conference alignment, or the rule changes that have allowed kids to transfer "like we've never known it".... all would have merit. Practically everything in college football has changed but the redshirt. Numbers that survived attrition actually do, from a distance, cherry picking, forgetting all the walk ons injuried/retiries and only count who's left.... may approach 50%. But thats attrition and its been around for years. This years senior class (that haven't redshirted) is still less than half not including the walk ons and everyone that has fallen off the roster and we still have a season to go (stay healthy everyone)
*To many walk ons, a redshirt is a chance to close the gap on scholarship kids with bigger bodies, from bigger schools giving them a bigger chance to play. Been the same way for years and still is. You can't ignore the boatload of kids that benefit from the redshirt (if they chose, some don't as they just want to be apart of it and move along when they finish school)
roughly 90% of the current roster (new recruits pending) redshirted at some point in there career, the incoming class of freshman will redshirt at a high rate, the outgoing transfers will redshirt at a high rate, the incoming portal additions have/will redshirt at a high rate. A select few, will not and the number of guys avoiding it will probably decrease as the roster improves. i just don't see where redshirting has changed mathematically or tactically to a large degree.

https://www.ourlads.com/ncaa-football-depth-charts/roster/nebraska/91303
 
RedStones said:
All good.
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Cvillehusker said:
Jaeden Gould transfered to Syracuse and is now back in Portal
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Hooked on Huskers said:
You remember Huskers JV team ?? Mostly true freshmen. I think only 3 or 4 games per season.

Question ..... after JV players, 4-year eligible left or 3 :Confused:

Anyway in c.1990 or so, NU announced it would discontinue its JV/Freshman program.
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Correct me if I’m wrong but the JV team was due to Freshman being ineligible to play. Once that disappeared I believe most JV teams did too.
 



We have brought in a total of 70 some new scholarship players in the last 2 years. That forces us to dip into that crowd quite a bit. I don’t believe that will likely be the norm going forward. Will the transfer portal afford some recruits to move on if they feel they got lost in the system waiting a year. Possibly. I think it’s a little too early to say yes or no.

Best guess is…..maybe.
 
70county said:
Freshman we’re not always eligible to play varsity, Not sure when thst changed ~70’s? but it was long before the JV team stopped playing which went well into the 80’s….. I think
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I was a Freshman in 1980. Turner Gill and Irving Fryer were roommates a few doors down from me. I didn't know anything about them until I watched the JV game against I believe Air Force. I don't know if they were eligible then but they were on the JV/Freshman team.
 
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Skers4life said:
This, and I would say that OL might be the exception as they usually always need time to develop and adjust physically.
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Yep, our rush ends, D linemen and sometimes MLBs as well, and as bodies grow from safety to Jack as well as TEs.

Trick is is catching them early enough on campus and talking them into position change which they've likely done coming in.
 
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Hville said:
I was a Freshman in 1980. Turner Gill and Irving Fryer were roommates a few doors down from me. I didn't know anything about them until I watched the JV game against I believe Air Force. I don't know if they were eligible then but they were on the JV/Freshman team.
Couple good reads for everyone. Freshman became eligible for varsity play in 1972 for the first time in 2 decades. Freshman were eligible during war time. Other interesting notes would be the Marshall plan crash, NCAA declaring them eligible but giving conferences the option in which some initially planned to do jointly until coaches began complaining that it was being used against them.
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Couple good reads for everyone. Freshman became eligible for varsity play in 1972 for the first time in 2 decades. Freshman were eligible during the war. Other interesting notes would be the marshall plan crash in 1971, NCAA declaring freshman eligible across the board in 1972 but giving the conferences the choice.

https://www.oklahoman.com/story/spo...ility-changed-football-landscape/61049412007/

But despite the NCAA's vote to allow freshmen eligibility, individual conferences could still keep rookies from competing. The conferences initially intended to do just that, Neinas said.

“We made an agreement that, even though the NCAA was allowing it, we would mutually agree not to provide freshman eligibility,” Neinas said. “That collapsed after two months, when all the coaches came back and said how that was being used against them. We more or less relented and went along with it.”
(How freshman wanting to play was a thing 50 years ago and that it didn't bring the hole thing to a screeching halt:Sarcasm:
I guess it IS just "as we knew it"

Still, the decision to reverse approximately two decades of freshmen ineligibility, implemented in the early 1950s after freshmen could play while wars were ongoing, came following a tragedy. After the Marshall plane crash that killed 37 players and coaches, the NCAA granted the school special permission to play freshmen in 1971. Another key factor was the increasing financial strain freshman teams put on athletic departments.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Gill
"Gill arrived on campus in 1980 and saw limited action in mop-up duty as a freshman, which at the time was still relatively unusual, as freshmen had only been recently allowed under NCAA rules to participate at the varsity level."
 



70county said:
Couple good reads for everyone. Freshman became eligible for varsity play in 1972 for the first time in 2 decades. Freshman were eligible during the war. Other interesting notes would be the marshall plan crash in 1971, NCAA declaring freshman eligible across the board in 1972 but giving the conferences the choice.

https://www.oklahoman.com/story/spo...ility-changed-football-landscape/61049412007/

But despite the NCAA's vote to allow freshmen eligibility, individual conferences could still keep rookies from competing. The conferences initially intended to do just that, Neinas said.

“We made an agreement that, even though the NCAA was allowing it, we would mutually agree not to provide freshman eligibility,” Neinas said. “That collapsed after two months, when all the coaches came back and said how that was being used against them. We more or less relented and went along with it.”
(How freshman wanting to play was a thing 50 years ago and that it didn't bring the hole thing to a screeching halt:Sarcasm:
I guess it IS just "as we knew it"

Still, the decision to reverse approximately two decades of freshmen ineligibility, implemented in the early 1950s after freshmen could play while wars were ongoing, came following a tragedy. After the Marshall plane crash that killed 37 players and coaches, the NCAA granted the school special permission to play freshmen in 1971. Another key factor was the increasing financial strain freshman teams put on athletic departments.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Gill
"Gill arrived on campus in 1980 and saw limited action in mop-up duty as a freshman, which at the time was still relatively unusual, as freshmen had only been recently allowed under NCAA rules to participate at the varsity level."
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Yep, I remember there were few teams to play.
 

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