What does it mean when they refer to a player as a "red Shirt"?

Question

What does it mean when they refer to a player as a "red Shirt"?

Answer 1

It means he will not play in any games that year and the year won' count against his 4 years of eligibility.  He also wears a red shirt in practice, sometimes.

If you have 2 equally good quaterbacks and one is a junior and one is a freshman, you would red shirt the freshman so you would have more years for him to start.

Now, if something happened to your quaterback and you put the redshirt in even for 1 play, he loses his red shirt status and the whole year counts. The NCAA rules commitee is very tough on this.

Another reason to redshirt a freshman is that it gives him 5 years of school and no pressure on him his first year so that he can adapt to college life.

Different colored shirts, red, yellow green, etc. are sed on positions that you do not want contact with during practice, i.e. the quaterback, the kicker, etc. You want to protect those players as much as possible during practice.

Answer 2

A college football player who skips a year of play without losing a year of eligibility. A player will often redshirt because of an injury or acedemic problem.

Answer 3

When you skip a year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omrXAsrpN...

Answer 4

Red Shirt does NOT mean a player cannot play in ANY games.  He has a tight limit, but it is NOT zero. Also, elibility is determined by the number of games you've APPEARED in, even one play. So you could appear in a game and still be red-shirted for the season.

A person who is "red-shirted" as an academic freshman will end up being an academic sophomore and an athletic eligibility freshman the following season.

Players are red-shirted primarily for TWO reasons:

1.  Early injury.  Red-shirting allows them to save all of their athletic eligibility for the following seasons.

2.  Over-population at key positions.  If a team has multiple top talents at QB, and you're a QB who has no chance to start, but offers powerful future potential, the staff will likely want to red-shirt you to protect all of your future seasons of eligibility because you're not going to play this season anyway.