BOL Round Table

Sat next to a former college football player on a plane yesterday and we started talking about all the outrage from the whole grayshirting situation. He brought up a point that I had not really considered. He said that, in his opinion, coaches promise recruits playing time all the time only to redshirt them as the season plays out. When the coaches told them that they would play their true freshmen year, they probably thought it was fairly likely, but circumstances change. Other players step-up and injuries happen. Sometimes, it ends up being best for the team and/or player to do something other than what was the original intent, and the coach has a responsibility to do the right thing. He said that he saw grayshirting the same way. He played at a school much smaller than Bama but I thought it was an interesting way to look at it. It actually seemed to tick him off that people were relating it to “pulling a scholarship.”