I'm thinking about doing it to even out my next class, but I don't know how bad the damage will be. I can live with a WE hit, but will anything else suffer? Any chance of him quitting before next season?

I have tried, and it fails. They don't stick around, unfortunately, and so you will essentially be wasting a redshirt.

I've done it at D3 and D2...to level out class size and/or to ensure a key position wasn't totally depleted by graduation.....after taking over another team.

There is a strong possibility he will leave. I've tried it once, on a DIA team I took over. I had two very good senior QB's. It was worth the risk to me to try and get two seaons out of those guys. If the guy got mad and left oh well he wouldn't have played much anyway. Any other position I don't know that I would've tried it. My redshirt senior stayed and I did get two seasons out of them.

I've done it around 5 or so times over the years, and I've only had 1 actually stick around for his senior season instead of quitting.

Gotta make sure the guy played the season before you RS him... when I follow that course I have not lost a guy the two times I RS a senior

They certainly can leave ... if they do, it is no big deal for you (unless they are really good and should be playing) ... since they will leave w/o the red shirt anyway. It is, at worst, the waste of a RS or at best, it works.

The only negative is the WE drop.