According to the NCAA, the term “redshirt” is used to describe a student athlete who doesn’t participate in competition in a sport for an entire academic year. In other words, it is sitting out for a year and saving that year of eligibility the future. Each athlete is allowed four years of varsity competition. Athletes that are redshirted still practice with the team, meet with the team, workout with the team and some even travel with the team, but they never play in games.
A student athlete may be redshirted for a number of reasons. Some players redshirt for medical reasons, some redshirt to gain experience and knowledge of the program, others redshirt in order to maximize the number of years of competition in which they are the primary starter or for other playing time purposes.
Starting quarterback Russell Wilson noted that redshirting his freshman year helped him get ready for division I football as well as prepare to be a team leader.
“[Redshirting] definitely helped me,” Wilson said. “It helped me to get to know people first of all, getting to know my teammates, including guys who are playing now and guys who aren’t playing now.”
The decision for players to redshirt is not an easy one and is described as a gamble by cross country coach Rollie Geiger.
“If you redshirt, you are playing the injury card. If you redshirt someone that is healthy, then you take away that card that you can play later on if they do have a problem,” Geiger said. “So it is a gamble to redshirt someone who’s healthy because if they get injured then you’ve lost a year of competition.”
It is common for players and coaches to make the sometimes-difficult decision to redshirt. Forty-seven players on the football roster, not including those who are not competing this year, have redshirted for a year. Another sport that utilizes the redshirt is men’s cross-country. Geiger redshirts nearly all of his athletes, attributing it to the increased distance at which college runners compete.
“In the case of cross country, on the men’s side, a high school athlete competes at 5,000 meter distance, whereas in college we race at either 8,000 or 10,000,” Geiger said. “It’s a different set of rules, it’s a different game, so sometimes it takes an extra year to mature and be able to run that extra distance.”
Although not all sports have a different set of rules from the high school level, the games definitely change.
“It really helped me learn the speed of college football,” Wilson said of his year as a redshirt. “You have to learn how to take advantage of things that are there and also salvage things that aren’t there. That is what redshirting helped me with most, learning to make those decisions.”
Adjusting to college level athletics is a main factor in athletes’ and coaches’ decision to redshirt. Many athletes, although they may have outstanding skills, are simply not ready mentally and physically to compete at a Division I level as a true freshman. According to Geiger, sitting out a year is just as difficult, maybe even more difficult than trying to compete.
“What throws off athletes is that they came out of high school being one of the best athletes in the country and now you are saying to them ‘you’re not good enough, you’ve got to sit down and wait a year.'” Geiger said. “It’s hard for a high school athlete to be ‘the athlete’ and now they are sitting and watching. it’s a hard thing to do. It’s about development, maturity and if you’re not a top athlete and you won’t compete, then save [the eligibility].”
