I've never done this before, but am seriously thinking of doing it this upcoming season for one of my teams.

Not looking to do it for recruiting resources this season, as he's my only senior and I don't have much resources to play with this season anyways, but am looking to do it for recruiting resources next season. And my team is not going to be competitive this season (very young and rebuilding), but should be able to do something next season, and he would definitely help.

My questions are:

1) Any chance that he'll get ****** off and want to transfer if he doesn't play?
2) Is there any downside to just giving him the redshirt now and taking the big hit in WE (around 50+ points) as opposed to just benching him during the season and giving him the redshirt after the final game is played?

I guess my fear is that I'll keep him off the depth chart and on "mop-up" only, but something screwy happens during the season (multiple OT game, players fouling out, and he gets pulled into a game from the end of the bench which ends my opportunity to redshirt him).

1) No
2) The only downside is he wouldn't grow at all this season if you applied the R/S at the beginning of the year. If he's basically maxed out, I'd apply it at the beginning of the season.

Last season I did this with a big that started the season with a WE around 70. He gained about 40 points before I threw the R/S on at the end of the year, so it was worth it (to me) to hold off on the R/S.

Yeah, if you're going to do this, it's optimal - but only slightly so - to redshirt at the end of the season, so he grows a little more in attributes (if applicable) and IQ. With bottomed out WE, he will sit like a bump on a log all season. That won't matter a whole lot, he may already be maxed or close on everything important, and for IQ, it will only be the difference of half a grade at most. But it's not nothing. I'd recommend as soon after the conference tourney as you can, if you go this route, so you don't forget.

The biggest downside for me is that I am likely to forget about him and just let him walk at the end of the season. I usually have to set some type of reminder to remember when to actually apply the redshirt, and even reminders don't typically help me much because I usually just turn them off. So for me personally, if he's important to next season's plans, which is really the only reason I consider this move seriously, I will tend to apply the redshirt toward the middle of the season, rather than wait until the last possible moment. He won't leave, as the system stands right now, so no worries there.

i think most of the fear of #2 comes from a long history of folks putting a player on mop-up only but leaving them on the depth chart. that used to come up regularly for whatever reason. i peronally think it is extremely rare to have a player show up in a game who is off the depth chart, assuming you actually have a decently full depth chart. i would not be comfortable with like 7 guys on the chart, that one of those off-chart guys won't play. but if you had say 11 on the chart and filled every (or almost every) slot, the odds of that 12th guy showing up are extremely close to 0.