There really aren't any more now that graduate early or red-shirt than there were before we just live in a more connected world and college athletics is even more covered by traditional press, online media and social media than it was. Before only on campus stars were covered and not nearly as much as today and recruiting was barely covered at all and was more a coach's thing that fans knew little about (it was a new moment in sports journalism, and an enormous one with huge implications for where sports journalism would go in the future, when a Knoxville radio station sent a reporter to cover the announcement of some High School kid named Peyton Manning -- that action is now standard but it was unheard of then).

Speaking of Peyton... When he announced he was returning for his 'senior' year, it was even more about simply returning to college than folks realized. He'd already graduated in 3 years and was pursuing a graduate degree for his 4th or 'senior' year.

Our program is setup to graduate most athletes in 3 years whether they red-shirt or not. And really, it makes sense given that athletes are often on campus as early enrollees and some are there in part of the summer or mini-term. It's fairly easy to take an extra course in one or more of the three non-standard terms and pile up credits.

That said, where I think today IS different is that talent is accumulating over a handful of schools that pull in top 25 recruiting classes every year, particularly those pulling in top 10 classes yearly, whereas in years past talent was more evenly spread out among all schools. When you combine red-shirts and graduating early with a stacked roster, you're going to start seeing high profile transfers. But I don't think it's enough to call it a type of free agency -- I think we're seeing a few high profile guys because a few schools hit the QB lottery and they have 3-4 QBs that could all be starters. That's not happening everywhere but at a few schools that have recruited the QB position very well.

This post was edited on 1/9/15 at 6:23 pm