This is his second email. I moved him to second on the depth chart, got his minutes up, then moved him back down to third. I don't really need him this year, but I'd rather not lose him.

"All I asked for was a little more playing time and I'm not seeing it - I let you know about my concerns and you don't do anything? Here's a concern for you - you may have an extra scholarship next season."

I can start him for a couple games, maybe three of the next five. Not much beyond that.

There's no way to know for sure until the season is over. Each player has a unique threshold for what is/isn't acceptable to them and for what it will take for them to transfer/stay.

Assuming there are no promises involved, the second email doesn't assure anything other than he likely lost a few more WE points after sending it. A lot of us have tried to intentionally get players to quit our teams by not playing them (so as to not take the reputation hit by outright cutting the kid) and finding that we were still stuck with the dead weight the following season anyhow. I know at least one time I got three complaint emails from the kid and he'd bled off 20+ points of WE, but he was still back on the roster for me the following year as a senior.

If you can get his minutes up, you can recover most/all of the WE loss. My understanding from support exchanges years ago was that if there is any WE loss, there's a chance the kid chooses to leave the program at season's end. But it is by no means a sure thing that it happens.

I forgot and left a promised start on a guy and not only didn't start him but barely played him all year and he stayed (he was a backup option and I wasn't super pumped about an international that I couldn't tell cores on, of course once he showed up no way I wanted him starting) :/ I wouldn't think that message tells you, to me it's a bit of a variable. If you can get him minutes and get WE loss back he'll stay 99% sure, if not there's some percentage (I never figured) he goes.

in my experience, if you want him to go, he will return - and vice versa - but I'm a pessimist

Posted by guyo26 on 9/7/2016 1:21:00 PM (view original):
I forgot and left a promised start on a guy and not only didn't start him but barely played him all year and he stayed (he was a backup option and I wasn't super pumped about an international that I couldn't tell cores on, of course once he showed up no way I wanted him starting) :/ I wouldn't think that message tells you, to me it's a bit of a variable. If you can get him minutes and get WE loss back he'll stay 99% sure, if not there's some percentage (I never figured) he goes.

I've played for like 130 seasons and I've lost one player in that whole time, so it definitely isn't a common occurrence.

Ironically, the one that I lost was a case where the kid was a foul magnet in the final game of the season and that caused me to miss his "I need to play x minutes more" request by 0.2 minutes and he decided to walk over it.