CAA Pushes Five-Year Plan

BALTIMORE — Normally, college football coaches don’t like to look too far ahead. But at the Colonial Athletic Association media day this week, the league’s coaches were quick to talk about a change they hope is coming in 2012.

The CAA has proposed legislation to the NCAA that would allow Division I-AA football players to play five seasons, eliminating redshirting.

Simply put, the rule would allow freshmen in college to play in games as needed by their teams, gain experience and still retain a full four years of eligibility after their first season.

“I think if they can pass that for I-AA football, it’d be one of the best pieces of legislation they put through,” New Hampshire coach Sean McDonnell said this week.

The league’s proposal is currently being reviewed by various NCAA committees. If they push it along, it could be voted on by presidents of I-AA football schools in January and go into effect for the 2012 year.

“I would be shocked, I really would be shocked, if we don’t get a lot of support on a national level,” JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne said Thursday.

While some players would become five-year starters, most, the coaches said, would just get limited action during their rookie year.

CAA commissioner Tom Yeager said the rule his league has proposed applies only to I-AA football. In I-AA, teams have 63 scholarships, while I-A teams have 85. (I-AA teams can break up those scholarships into partial grants, which I-A teams cannot.)

By allowing athletes to play five years, coaches said they’d be able to use younger players for limited action, resting their starters on special teams and in lopsided games. That would give young players a chance to get experience and would cut down on injuries to starters.

“With a redshirt class and with injuries, towards the tail end of the season you may in effect be traveling with 48 [players],” Yeager said. “You have starters that are on special teams that don’t need to be. You have kids that are playing later in the game because there are no backups.”

Under the current system, college players are allowed to play four years within a five-year time frame. That means many freshmen are permitted to practice with their teams but not permitted to play in games – a system known as redshirting.

Coaches, including James Madison’s Mickey Matthews, like to redshirt freshmen to give them a chance to develop physically and get acclimated to college life. Sometimes, though, these young players are pressed into service late in the season because of injuries to veterans, costing them an entire season of eligibility.

Under the new rule, the players could get in-game experience throughout the year and still have another four years left to play.

 “I’ve been a big supporter of it since Day 1,” Maine coach Jack Cosgrove said. “I think there’s a lot of people with PhDs that make decisions on college football on college campuses but not a lot with CS. Common sense. This one makes sense.”

Coaches said the change would also help improve academic performance by freshmen, something they said can be sub-par when players don’t have the chance to get on the field.

“The thing I think it does, it keeps them competing,” Cosgrove said. “When you’re told you’re redshirting, everyone’s got a human shutdown mechanism.”

Yeager agreed.

“The redshirt guys, because they know they’re not playing, they’re not 100 percent engaged in everything that’s going on on the field and in the classroom,” he said.

Since the league proposed the change, Yeager and the coaches have heard people wonder if I-A schools should push for a similar measure. But with more scholarship players available at that level, McDonnell said this policy change is unique to I-AA.

“I-A doesn’t need it,” McDonnell said.

Another potential criticism of the proposal is that it only helps football, not all the other NCAA sports.

Yeager said that shouldn’t be a factor in deciding whether to implement the league’s proposal.

“One of the questions is, what about all the other sports?” Yeager said. “Fine, somebody else put it in. We’re putting it in for football.”

So what about the league’s record books? Players with five years of eligibility would certainly have the chance to accrue greater career totals.

“We’ll figure it out,” Yeager said. “Remember, up until the ’70s, freshmen couldn’t play. Major league baseball used to play 148 games not 162.”