I recently placed a redshirt on a freshmen recruit without ever informing him prior. If his work ethic didn't drop, I'd keep it on him, and if it did, I would try it on a different player. Super Standard stuff.

What ended up happening was, he was not happy, and his WE dropped only 4 points. To me, that's well worth keeping the redshirt on. However, I did a quick search, and someone noted that when they did this, the players work ethic never improved even after being a 2 year starter.

I was just wondering if anyone else had any experience in this situation. Also, if his work ethic will never improve, I'm assuming its still worth the extra year you get from redshirting.

Thanks!

I truly doubt that actually happened.  If it did, then the coach whose recruit failed to improve at all in WE made a mistake in not sending a ticket.  Slow WE growth occurs only when a player has extremely low or extremely high WE.  In the middle, there will be no problem.  A -4 WE hit is well worth taking.

Check back with me at the start of next season in Tark if you need some evidence. I have the same situation of a recruit having lost 5 points of WE after redshirt, so I left it. I've never heard of a recruit not improving the next season from it though.

www.whatifsports.com/hd/PlayerProfile/Ratings.aspx

I typically don't inform of redshirt and just hope the kid will take it. Every kid I've had has always improved "normally" in WE the season after he's redshirted. If he only dropped four points, let him be hurt and go with it. That's easily an acceptable tradeoff for saving the year of eligibility.

The only way the WE didn't improve is if the drop was to 1. I've had that happen a couple of times and the player's WE improved as it normally would. These players memories don't carry over, season to season. 

The only time I ever informed a recruit of a possible redshirt he told me I was crazy and didn't sign. I won't ever do that anymore. 

Posted by dshook30 on 9/11/2013 5:02:00 PM (view original):
The only time I ever informed a recruit of a possible redshirt he told me I was crazy and didn't sign. I won't ever do that anymore. 

You can still get him to sign.  Just throw a couple visits his way on the same cycle and you'll sometimes get the "you're crazy" email (or sometimes they'll just take it fine) and then after the visits, you'll be back in his good graces.  I never inform without doing that because I don't want some other team who may have a little bit of effort into him suddenly come back up as the main choice.

Posted by dshook30 on 9/11/2013 5:02:00 PM (view original):
The only time I ever informed a recruit of a possible redshirt he told me I was crazy and didn't sign. I won't ever do that anymore. 

Rule changes to the WE hit when a redshirt is "rejected" made it important to inform of redshirt in certain situations (e.g. when the player you're signing will be your only listed player at a certain position, but you still don't intend on playing him or he won't nearly be the lowest OVR player on the roster).  I'm not sure of the least expensive way to do it, but you can send the redshirt with a couple letters and few HVs and, as long as no other coach is recruiting the player, though the redshirt will be processed first and may be negative, after the letters & visits are processed, the player will ordinarily turn right around and sign.   

According to CS, you don't need to send visits in same cycle, but that only means that previous effort would have had to be sufficient to compensate for the negative reaction to the redshirt.