Nine games? Comedy in motion
FBS coaches unanimously voted Tuesday to change the redshirt rule to let players take part in up to nine games while maintaining a full year of eligibility. https://t.co/y7BXwqoN2J https://t.co/y7BXwqoN2J— Reuters Sports (@ReutersSports) January 13, 2026
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
lol
Just remove it and allow for 5 years post high school graduation
They don't want that. They want endless eligibility.
Are they even pretending it's about education anymore?
Why bother? Some of these players make more in a year than the expected value of the degrees they would achieve.
Now this is a thread we really need DC's input on...
Found a summary.
Note: this might be me though
I move to grant DC temporary restricted reinstatement so that he can give his unfettered opinion on this topic
Do we have a second?
I'd like to have DC back. He ruffled a lot of feathers, and I certainly didn't agree with a lot of his opinions. But I feel like he was a core part of this community.
Respectfully disagree. Towards the end it felt like he had a hard time agreeing with even what color the sky was. It began to actively degrade my browsing experience knowing there'd be an argument that moved goalposts in every discussion
He was *Randy* Quaid in Major League, an endless pessimist with rare glimpses of happiness. As long as he wasn't insulting or harshly offending people on here, I would be for him being back. Especially when we make the playoffs I will need this kinda energy:
:
Dennis Quaid?
Corrected for Quaid Accuracy
Joe, I want to state for the record that I'm not the one that said this (though I was thinking it).
What the hell is the point of even having a Redshirt year if you play most of the season?
This shit is just getting comical now....
Backdoor 5 for 5 rule. It allows guys to get as close to a full year of competition as possible without actually changing from the 4 years and redshirt formula.
More chances for a medical redshirt!
The entire reason for athletes to go to college is a complete joke now.
"We didn't come here to do no school!" rings even more true today.
They're not the final say on this though right?
If every coach agrees to a rule....
Correct. And you understand why a coach would want this rule -- players have been using the redshirt to preemptively sit out to preserve eligibility if the beginning of the season hasnt gone the way they wanted it to.
I mean we all want Noah chambers for another season if possible, he only played 8 games. Robinson was in 9 games.
Jesus christ. This is fucking ridiculous
This could create some interesting dynamics. Are all players now load managed throughout the season to stay at <9 games? Does. QB1 now sit for the 'easy' games? Basically you rotate and never have your full team until the playoffs...
You get an extra year. YOU get an extra year. Ev-reee-body gets an extra year!
Next up:
Previous players lawyer up for one more year of eligibility under the new rule. Ya got that lucrative new NIL to play for.
Yeah this is exactly what will happen. So dumb
Just remember... there are ample examples (including this) that prove that when the schools want to change something, they do so quickly.
So everything that isn't changing... it's because the schools (not the ncaa) don't want to.
the schools are the NCAA
Exactly... I get so annoyed when I read comments like "the NCAA is spineless"... the NCAA isn't some regulatory body. It's just things the schools collectively agree to. So when you're mad at the NCAA, you're really just mad at the schools, presidents, ADs, etc (likely including (y)our own).
wat
never, ever wonder why the NCAA loses every time it goes to court
The correct answer...the one that will withstand court challenge...is FIVE. The rule should state that An athlete can participate in NCAA sponsored sports in no more than five academic calendar years. Why five? Because that is the amount of time it takes to complete the necessary academic requirements for an undergraduate degree.
Tie ALL eligibility rules to academics (because that is why you get non-profit tax status) and your rules are bullet proof. Fuck around trying to achieve some other type of outcome for administrative, monetary, or some other tactical non-academic reason and LOSE every, single, time.
Remember when almost everybody graduated in 4 years. Kids today graduate in 3 or less with enough AP credits coming in.
Daughter graduated in 3 and didn't realize it was going to happen. Had already re-upped her apartment lease and hadn't applied to grad school in time. Wound up hanging out for a year working as a tutor for the athletic department and as a lab tech (feeding crystal meth to pigeons) for some doctoral candidates.
My daughter is graduating in 3.5 on current schedule.
some of us took the long way round...
Same, but that just gave me more quality time in Blacksburg.
Do I want my daughter to follow the same path? Ehhhhh, not really, no.
Switched majors from engineering to accounting to management over the course of three years and graduated in 5 years. Never more than 15 credits per quarter and the 5th year was 12, 9, and 6 credits(spring semester was
Public Speaking and some pass/fail class that I blew off. Fabtastic last spring in "Blacksburg!
To be fair, isn't architecture a 5 year program? And most engineers don't graduate in 4 (at least it was very rare when I was there).
I doubt there are many engineering or architecture students playing football, so not sure it really applies, but maybe at some schools.
I could have graduated in 3.5 on my engineering track, but one of the design courses I wanted to take wasn't offered in the fall. So I farted around with 15 and 12 credits my senior year. Of course, the first three years averaged about 19 a semester and I took summer courses as well.
I would have graduated in 3.5 but co-op'd one semester. It was electrical engineering so once you know like 6 equations you can just derive the rest so pretty easy.
When I was at Tech, it was joking referred to as the '5-year plan' for people who took more than 4 years. Almost no one was less than 4. But you are correct, the architecture program was 5 years as a base length back then. And people who did an internship somewhere would routinely take 5 years to get the degree as they would not be on campus for a semester or two.
I could have done mine in 3.5 if I there had been a way to take Physical Chemistry over the summer and the second semester of it in the actual fall semester, but don't think it was offered that way. And besides, I enjoyed it there so much that I stayed for another year as a lab tech before grad school.
Would have been done in 4 but my advisor waited until February of my Senior year to inform me they had made a mistake on my language requirement. They told me I had to take both 1 and 2 of a language because I switched from Environmental Science to Political Science. I switched after my freshman year and did annual reviews with my advisor and it never came up. They said that even though I had 5 years of language from Middle School to HS(3 spanish/2 french) it wasnt enough because I needed 4 of one language. Was forced to take Spanish 2 over the summer at Nova and then Spanish 1 in the fall.
The only nice thing was that last semester I no longer had to be in the Corps so got to experience a semester of being a "normal" student. I also set my schedule from 10am on Tuesday to 3pm on Thursday. Still had to take 12 credits though for ROTC.
Architecture is still 5 and hopefully always will be
How about just make it an age limit? You don't allow 21-year-olds in the Little League World Series against 12-year-olds. Say you cannot compete in college sports if you are above age 24 or 25 or whatever cutoff and claim it is about safety of making 17- or 18-year-olds who are still maturing from being with people way older. The specific argument about safety may be made up, but so what? You can grandfather (no pun intended) the current players that are already over whatever you set the cutoff at and just make it apply to new people coming in.
Some of the BYU students who go on mission will lose out and someone who went into the military and comes back to school will too. But it's better than what it is now. And I fully expect the 5-year maximum - which I agree is an excellent solution and should be done - will get thrown out by some idiot judge as soon as the next player over the age lawyers up and sues.
There is a VERY narrow age range when that would apply. Most agree athletic peak is somewhere mid twenties to maybe thirty. I wouldn't automatically say a 40 year old that could still play ball shouldn't get a scholarship to some lower level school.