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All Freshman Ineligible

The Alabaster Yak

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SIAP somewhere, as it was first reported a few days back, but I thought it was worth a thread for discussion.

The Big 10 has had discussions with other conferences, the NCAA, and outsiders about the idea of making all Freshman athletes ineligible to take an "education first" approach. Thoughts?

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/s...anges-freshman-eligibility-national-consensus

Edit: Mods - Feel freed to fix the spelling of Freshmen in the thread title
 
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They did something similar "back in the day". Sometime in the mid 70's, pretty much everybody had dropped it.
 
Half joking but could we tweak the thread title? I was freaking out thinking that some recruiting violation led to our entire incoming class being ineligible.
 
They did something similar "back in the day". Sometime in the mid 70's, pretty much everybody had dropped it.

Yeah. I remember John Wooden saying something about how he would have won 1 more national championship if the NCAA would have allowed Kareem to play varsity basketball as a freshman.
 
Half joking but could we tweak the thread title? I was freaking out thinking that some recruiting violation led to our entire incoming class being ineligible.


:lol: Me too. I thought WTF did MM do?
 
Half joking but could we tweak the thread title? I was freaking out thinking that some recruiting violation led to our entire incoming class being ineligible.

Yep, that got me, too. Should say "Suggestion: Make All Freshmen Redshirt" or something.
 
Answer:

"NCAA Division One Freshmen could play varsity ball until 1954. The NCAA then changed the rules and freshman were ineligible to play. The rule was rescinded in 1973. That is why you see college greats like Robertson, West, Alcindor (Jabbar), Mount, Maravich, Carr etc. playing in only 75 to 90 games. They were eligible for only three varsity seasons. Maravich, Mount, Robertson, Lucas, Russell all would have put up some unreachable numbers if they played 140 games in a career like the guys of today. If Maravich had played in 113 varsity games he would have scored 5000 career points and Oscar would have scored over 3800 points.


Read more: http://www.answers.com/Q/When_did_the_NCAA_allow_freshmen_to_play_at_the_varsity_level#ixzz3SyqSa9S8"
 
They did something similar "back in the day". Sometime in the mid 70's, pretty much everybody had dropped it.

Yeah. I remember John Wooden saying something about how he would have won 1 more national championship if the NCAA would have allowed Kareem to play varsity basketball as a freshman.

Also remember seeing in "We Are Marshall" that Jack Lengyel and the Marshall administration had to petition the NCAA to let freshmen play when they were restarting the football program in 1971 after the plane crash in 1970.
 
not sure i like it, would have to give some thought.

it might cut down on the 1 and done's.
 
cardale-play-school.png


How I feel on the subject.
 
Freshman should not play...Give them 6 to play 4. That would align with Federal graduation standards. From University perspective, why would they give a kid a scholarship if they know he will only complete maybe one semester? NBA sucks NFL is not far behind.
 
Freshman should not play...Give them 6 to play 4. That would align with Federal graduation standards. From University perspective, why would they give a kid a scholarship if they know he will only complete maybe one semester? NBA sucks NFL is not far behind.

1st bold - I'm assuming you're referring to college basketball here, but I can assure you the University of Kentucky doesn't give scholarships to basketball players in the hope they will be there for 4 years.

2nd bold - You're high
 
Idiotic. Who says freshmen can't be students and athletes? Sounds like they're overreacting from the players threat to form a union.

This is yet another attempt to further help the big schools and hurt those who are trying to rebuild.
 
Idiotic. Who says freshmen can't be students and athletes? Sounds like they're overreacting from the players threat to form a union.

This is yet another attempt to further help the big schools and hurt those who are trying to rebuild.

To your point, Notre Dame is a good example. Their policy is not to redshirt freshmen. They're expected to be both students and athletes. They may award a 5th year of eligibility after the 4 years if the guy didn't play one season, but it's not an automatic thing. I'm sure that the Domers would take a lot of exception to the notion that an automatic redshirt forced on every single player equates to caring more about academic integrity.
 
I'm sure that the Domers would take a lot of exception to the notion that an automatic redshirt forced on every single player equates to caring more about academic integrity.

Now you have me thinking it may be a good idea.
 
I've heard that part of the reason for the longer time for the NFL vs the NBA is actually a case of player safety (not saying those making the case don't also have a self-serving benefit from doing so, just saying that it's a reason I've heard articulated).

The basic premise rests on two facts: 1. the human male musculoskeletal system, and especially the tendons and ligaments in the major joints, does not reach full size and strength until sometime around 24-25, and 2. football is a much higher impact sport, especially at the pro level.

#1 is a medically true fact - it really can't be disputed. Yes, you can post a picture of an 18 year old that's 6'2" and 240lb of all muscle and ask how that's not a "physically mature male," but that's not medical evidence. The simple fact is that the young man in the picture will likely get to be another 1/2" to 3/4" taller, and his clavicle will continue to slowly grow (broadening the shoulders) until he's 24 or 25. But, more to the point, even if his bones don't grow another millimeter, and his muscles are as big as they will ever be, the tendons and ligaments that hold those two things together won't reach full strength until he's 24 or 25.

So, I can see that there may be an argument that before we'll hire you to be hit hard and thrown to the ground by a bunch of very large and very fit men for 3 hours a day 20+ times over the course of 21 weeks every fall, we want to be sure that your body is as best able to withstand that as is possible. There is, most likely, a marginal increase in player safety as a result of the policy.

How big that margin is, I don't know, and I don't think anyone else really does either. Yes, the player's joints, tendons, ligaments, etc are stronger when they are 24 than they are when they are 19. Yes the game is more physically demanding in the pros than in college. Whether the added musculoskeletal strength adds any meaningful protection against the additional physical punishment is probably an open question, and not one with an easy answer: sure, there's probably some level of increased injury (a weaker joint is a weaker joint), but what is the level and how do you compensate for a younger body healing faster after injury?

It's not like we have controlled, random sets of young football players and can send some to college and some to the NFL to conduct an experiment - we don't even have non-random populations to test against each other, so there's no ideal data on which to base a judgement. And, for better or worse, the only actual data we do have, the medical data that tells us that human male musculoskeletal systems don't reach maturity until close to 25, points in the direction of an older minimum age for entry in the league.
 
If (some) players feel classes are pointless and they are only in it to get to the NFL, then this proposal won't help anyway.

Also, I have long felt that the NFL should have it's own development league. Players not interested in classes shouldn't go to college - definitely not on scholarship - and can play in a minor league to get the NFL's attention. Also, the NFL gets a lot of perks, free stadiums, free player development, etc. I think these costs should be passed to the professional league in one way or another. Every sport except football develops players that way. (A draft contract fee would be an example. If you draft / sign a player, then you pay a transfer fee to that university. The conferences would probably make a sharing agreement like they do with bowl games)
 
skibum - interesting stuff. But if that was the reason, they'd make 24 or 25 the age. It's not and I'd strongly suspect the difference between 19 and 21 is slight... especially when taking into account that they draft individuals, not averages, individuals develop at different rates within the norm, and those entering the draft younger would significantly skew toward the early developers. I learned something, though, so Thank You.
 
skibum - interesting stuff. But if that was the reason, they'd make 24 or 25 the age. It's not and I'd strongly suspect the difference between 19 and 21 is slight... especially when taking into account that they draft individuals, not averages, individuals develop at different rates within the norm, and those entering the draft younger would significantly skew toward the early developers. I learned something, though, so Thank You.
I'm not sure I buy the argument either - I hope that came across in my post. I just wanted to share that I had heard it (and on more than one occasion), and find it, well, interesting.

I would also note that the military has sort of come to similar conclusions regarding the durability of young men. They won't channel the "best" recruits directly into the most physically demanding training/schools/forces immediately after they finish boot camp; instead, you have serve with a line unit for a couple years first. They found that the washout rate (due to injuries and other factors) decreased substantially after a couple more years of maturity. Of course, other confounding factors come into play here as well: they had another couple years to sift through and make sure the ones chosen really were the best, and that may play a larger role than physical maturity. This is where the cynic in me says, "the NFL has gotten colleges to do this for them for free, why would they change it?"

A little less than 50% of 5* recruits get drafted, and about 75% of them get retained (for a definition of retained, and to see the source of percentages see this bleacher report article). If the NFL were directly signing 5* recruits, any money paid to the 63% of 18/19 year old 5*s who don't make it are pure losses. They don't incur those losses if colleges road test them first. Plus, I would be willing to bet that as long their services are the cost of a scholarship, that the colleges make more money on the 5* recruits that don't make it than the NFL would lose if they were the ones doing the sifting (or, in other words, the NFL comes out ahead and the universities come out ahead, the only ones who get screwed are the players - shocking, isn't it?).
 
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