Old Rider;1577312 wrote:I know this is overkill, but I found a little more info on the term greyshirt...
The term "grey shirting" has become a vogue term in major college football. You may be asking, what is grey shirting and how does it affect my college team? Grey shirting is the practice of a player signing a letter of intent to play for a college but does not report for the fall semester. The player reports for the spring semester and still retains his full eligibility as he would if starting in the fall.
There are many reasons for a school to grey shirt a player but nearly all of them revolve around the idea of oversigning a recruiting class.
- A player will not qualify academically. If the coaching staff knows going into the process that a player will likely not qualify to play on the FBS level academically for his freshman year, the school will have him sign with the school on national signing day and then oversign to replace him for the fall while working to set the player up with a junior college that will work to get him academically eligible to end up at the school in one or two years.
- A player is injured and the school wants to see how well he recovers from the injury. This is where things tend to get murky with schools basically keeping a player from going to another school with no given intent to let the player on the team when the spring semester rolls around. If the school does not think the player is any longer good enough or healed enough to be a contributor to the program, they will just tell the player after he signs that they have no intent of having him on the team.
- A coach knows a scholarship will be open after the season but not until the spring semester. This practice ends up happening with schools that see many departures due to transfers, players going pro, and naturally players just leaving the program in general. This is normally something that has been mentioned previously with the player and there is an understanding between the player and the university that this is the best way to go.
- A school gets a better recruit at the last minute. If a running back commits early in the process to a school and is the running back of choice for months and months and suddenly at the end of the signing period, a better player comes along and signs his letter of intent, the coaching staff may try to grey shirt the first player while having the better player sit out a semester. Usually this happens right before signing day and causes the highest amount of drama between coaches and players. Players feel like the coach abandoned them after the player pledged his services previously. The most common scenario ends up with the player choosing another college completely.
- Coaches trying to purposely circumvent the rules. When a coach brings in a large recruiting class that has all players academically make the cut, there has to be someone that loses out in the end. Many times a fringe player will be unceremoniously cut from the team with the press release saying he left the team for personal issues. This frees up a scholarship for the oversigned incoming player. Other times the incoming player may enroll in summer courses and work out with the team before the team decides later on that "it isn't a good fit" and they tell him he will not be with the program in the fall. This could result in a grey shirt or the player leaving the program entirely.
I wonder if there is alot of this in the SEC with all of their overrecruiting that supposedly is done down there.
Hre is an article from years ago about Boeckman...and as he states in the article, most of us never heard of the term before then either...
A standout high school quarterback, Todd Boeckman didn't know how to react during the recruiting process five years ago when Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel asked if he would consider "grayshirting."
"I'd never heard of the word," said Boeckman, now a junior and the favorite to replace Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith. "I didn't know what to say. I mean, how do you respond when you've never heard of something?"
If Boeckman wins the starting quarterback job at Ohio State, he no doubt will become the nation's highest-profile former grayshirt. The process of grayshirting allows a college program to hold back a committed recruit by at least one semester or quarter.
By delaying the enrollment, the five-year eligibility clock does not begin immediately and the incoming player counts against the next recruiting class rather than the current one.
Grayshirting is one of the methods used by college programs to accept a number of oral commitments that exceeds the NCAA-prescribed limits of no more than 25 scholarships per year and 85 for the total roster. Another method is to enroll recruits (often junior college transfers) before the national signing day. In that case, those players can count against the previous recruiting class, assuming spots were not filled.
At last glance, Colorado coach Dan Hawkins had oral commitments from at least 28 players leading up to Wednesday's national signing day and was on the recruiting trail last week, apparently looking for more. Alabama received commitments from 33 players in 2005. Texas Tech had 34 in 2006.
"Grayshirting really has become part of the recruiting lingo in the last few years," said Jeremy Crabtree, a football recruiting expert for Rivals.com. "It seems like every school is doing it."
While Boeckman was being recruited in 2002, Ohio State coaches explained that he could benefit in several ways by grayshirting. They asked Boeckman if he would wait until January 2004 to become a full-time college student rather than sign a national letter of intent in February 2003 like other members of his high school class.
Grayshirting, the coaches said, would leave Boeckman two years of eligibility, rather than one, after Smith and backup Justin Zwick completed their eligibility in 2006. Boeckman comes from a small town (St. Henry, Ohio), and an additional year would give him more time to mature and learn the offense.
And, perhaps most important from the coaches' viewpoint, it enabled Ohio State to offer a 2003 scholarship to someone else. "At first, I wondered if (Ohio State) really wanted me," Boeckman recalled. "But I talked to a lot of people and thought grayshirting was the best thing for me."
Read more:
Grayshirting gives coaches roster room - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/colleges/ci_5159515#ixzz2sa5huVRf
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y great job!!! Be happy Man!
