re: The NCAA should get rid of the Red Shirt

the current rules allow 5 years to play 4 for all players. the term "red shirt" is not an official NCAA term and mostly used to do nothing more than identify that a player has not played a previous year for any particular reason.....

It allows for missing a year for injury, transferring, or just needing an extra year of development before seeing the field.

I kind of like the rules they have now. Gives true freshmen that aren't quite ready a year to sit out. And the sitting a year after transfer is a good thing. Some players could go through the loophole of it not counting if you transfer divisions. Transfer to an fcs school or a juco like Cam did and play a year, get some type of game experience, then transfer back up to fbs. But most just go from fbs to fbs and sit, wasting a year.

I do think there should be something about injuries or a situation where you let young players play in blowouts and it not affect your redshirt. We had an issue with Bear Woods where he played very few plays in 2 games early in his career in his redshirt season and had to petition the NCAA to allow him to play his 5th year. He had to sit out the first two games his sr year and then got to play the final 10 games. I think that is a little too strict in the rule book.

I am for the sitting out a year if transferring rule for many reasons....

1. discipline - if a big headed recruit doesn't get what he wants, he could just transfer - way too damaging to the current discipline issue now.

2. trading - imagine players transferring "mid season" because a star player gets hurt and a team making a run at the NC "needs" a player... may seem extreme now, but if you make transferring easier, it will promote the transferring more and may actually promote some "trading" indirectly - this is college, not the pros