Posted by jaymc2007 on 8/1/2014 2:58:00 PM (view original):
Ok next question, if I am going to take this player and he won't get much playing time this year but will next year, should I redshirt him or just not even take him? And if I am going to redshirt him, should I inform him of it or just let him find out when he gets on campus?
That's a complex question that's hard to answer completely without knowing your exact situation. Here are some things to consider regarding redshirting:
1) Generally speaking, it is more beneficial to redshirt a player with high work ethic and/or a lot of high potentials. In those situations your player will benefit more from the extra year. If it's the really low WE guy that you are thinking about redshirting, then the extra season really won't help that much -- he won't gain much in ratings for that extra year and he may lose a lot of what he did gain during the offseason after the redshirt year.
2) That being said, it *can* be a good play to redshirt a guy with relatively low WE if you think that you will start him after the RS year. The benefit of the RS would be to get the guy's IQ up during the extra year so that he can play major minutes as soon as the RS year ends. I'm not sure I would do this for a really low WE player, but I did this once for a player with a WE in the low 20s and the extra PT I could give him in his RS Freshman year helped with his development.
3) To inform or not to inform about RS ... this really depends on your recruiting situation. They key thing to understand here is that informing of a redshirt always counts as negative recruiting effort -- so usually I send a couple of home visits or a campus visit at the same time as an inform RS to offset the negative impact it creates. Obviously that extra effort costs money, so If I think I need to save money for battles, scouting, etc. -- then generally I take my chances and don't inform the recruit of the RS. If I have money in the bank and am fairly certain I'm going to get the guy anyway, then I'm more likely to inform.
Also, if you don't inform of RS during recruiting but apply it after the guy shows on campus, his decision on whether to accept it without making a fuss is dictated largely by the quality of the other guys on your roster. If your recruit is one of the worst guys on your roster in terms of overall ratings, he's a lot more likely to take the RS. So you can also think about where said recruit would rank compared to your returning players and other recruiting targets when deciding whether to inform of the RS.
For really low WE guys (<20, let's say) -- I tend to evaluate them based on their current skills and not their potentials. Can the guy you are targeting help your team if his skills don't improve at all or improve by only a couple of points? If he can't, I would move on to someone else.