This is my first year recruiting.

I have two recruits I really want who have big upsides. I do a home visit/scholarship first round and hear good things

Coach, you're a class act and if the rest of the coaching staff and school are as dedicated as you, then I can't wait to play. Thanks for taking your time to speak with me.

Coach, thanks for stopping by. I appreciate you spending time to answer my questions and tell me a little more about N. Park and your program. I'll definitely keep you in mind.


I then do a campus visit and inform a redshirt and hear..

I'm going to lay it on the line for you because I'm a people person, that's what I do. You don't have the facility, the conference, the national publicity for someone of my skills. When I add all those things together it equals me passing on N. Park. It just won't happen. Sorry.

Coach, I'm really struggling right now - trying to figure out how to best let you know that I just don't see myself playing for you next season. Appreciate your time and best of luck in the future.

They are both undecided and have taken off my scholarship. Am I screwed or do I keep trying without trying to redshirt?

You can keep recruiting them and reoffer the scholarship and they may end up accepting it.  You can also remove the intent to redshirt and offer again and he'll consider you right away

You can only end up redshirting one of them, so I don't see the point of informing both guys of a redshirt

redshirting is delicate - when you are starting out you would do well just to lock up good recruits and not mess with the intent to redshirt until you have a better sense of whether it will work for that recruit

after some experience, you will be able to judge whether a recruit will be so happy with your program that the redshirt will not bother him or whether you have enough $$ to overcome the negative effect

if you like those recruits, take the redshirt off, go get em

the only time I ever inform of redshirt is to get a player to STOP considering me (so that opposing coaches don't think i have extra players considering me, which leads them to jump into battles for my recruits).