CHARLOTTE \u2014 College football head coaches voted unanimously Tuesday to recommend players be allowed to play nine games and retain their eligibility to declare a redshirt season.<\/p>\n
Currently, players can redshirt if they play four regular-season games or fewer, but exhaust a year of eligibility with the fifth regular-season game in a season. A rule change last year<\/a> made it so postseason games don\u2019t count toward the redshirt rule.<\/p>\n Tuesday\u2019s recommendation is not an official NCAA proposal but will be put in front of NCAA committees after around 60 Football Bowl Subdivision head coaches met for more than three hours at the conclusion of the American Football Coaches Association\u2019s annual convention in Charlotte.<\/p>\n AFCA executive director Craig Bohl announced the recommendation but declined to take questions.<\/p>\n Georgia\u2019s Kirby Smart, Clemson\u2019s Dabo Swinney, Notre Dame\u2019s Marcus Freeman and Virginia Tech\u2019s James Franklin were among the notable names in attendance, but multiple coaches from all Power 4 conferences and the Group of 6 attended as well.<\/p>\n Entering the meeting, there was optimism among many coaches that the meeting could conclude with a recommendation that players get five years to play five seasons of college football and to do away with redshirts and waivers that have grown in prominence in recent seasons. However, no such agreement on a recommendation was reached during the meeting.<\/p>\n The NCAA has already said it will keep current eligibility rules until the end of the 2026-27 academic year.<\/p>\n Some healthy players have elected to opt out of games to preserve a redshirt and not participate in more than the allowed four games. Earlier this season, Colorado freshman quarterback Julian Lewis sat out the Buffaloes\u2019 season finale to retain his redshirt and be a redshirt freshman for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n Currently, players have four years of eligibility, and in some cases have stretched their college careers to five, six and seven years, including redshirt seasons and medical waivers, as well as the additional year of eligibility given to athletes for the 2020 season shortened by the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n The NCAA\u2019s rules over eligibility have been subject to numerous lawsuits in recent years. Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia, who finished second in Heisman Trophy voting this season, earned a sixth year of eligibility<\/a> after being granted a court injunction that ruled his two seasons playing junior college football at New Mexico Military Institute in 2020 and 2021 didn\u2019t count toward his eligibility at FBS programs after beginning his career at New Mexico State in 2022.<\/p>\n Around 20 players, including Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar, are seeking a similar ruling<\/a> from a federal judge. And Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss is pursuing a waiver<\/a> for an additional year of eligibility because he didn\u2019t participate in a season while at Division II Ferris State.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE \u2014 College football head coaches voted unanimously Tuesday to recommend players be allowed to play nine games…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":513816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1428,1318,1317,1315,1316,62,222,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-513815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-ncaafootball","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-sports-business","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115889563551310972","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}