Fairly early in the University of Hawaii’s football training camp you usually begin to get a pretty good idea of which players would be consigned to scout team duty and unlikely to be seen in uniform come Saturdays.
This year, however, things don’t figure to be so cut and dried.
With the advent of the new redshirt rule for Division I football (other sports could follow) not only are the possibilities less defined right now, but they will be for a while.
The rule, which was announced last month, presents a roster flexibility coaches have never had and only dreamed of. For UH’s Nick Rolovich, in particular, the timing is almost providential. With a larger than usual pool of newcomers — true freshmen, junior college recruits and university transfers — accounting for nearly 40 percent of UH’s roster when training camp opened, the possibilities and opportunities are potentially significant.
With so much offseason turnover resulting in so many new players to be evaluated in the shadow of the earliest season opener in UH’s Division I history — Aug. 25 at Colorado State — decisions need not be made immediately or in haste up front on a 13-game regular season schedule.
Needless to say, “I think it is a great rule, it is really smart,” Rolovich said.
Players have five seasons in which to exhaust four years of eligibility and, previously, if a player so much as played in one game (barring medical circumstances), it counted against that total. Even with injury, the appearance had to have been in the first 30 percent of the season.
The rule suited football well in the days when the ceiling on scholarships was 100 or more and the regular season was 10-11 games. But, now, in times of 85 scholarships and 12- and 13-game regular-season schedules plus an extended postseason that can take a championship team to NFL-like regular-season levels, the change was needed.
The new rule also does not require that the four games be used in the first quarter of the season or be played consecutively.
Say, for example, a newcomer takes a while to get acclimated or struggles early on but begins to show promise on the scout team as the season unfolds. Under the new rules, the Rainbow Warriors can employ him in four games and still preserve four seasons of eligibility.
Or, imagine injuries hit one position particularly hard in a short stretch. Backups can be summoned to action and then returned to redshirt status, if need be, without burning the year.
One likely result is that UH, along with its peers, will be suiting up more players for home games.
While health and safety concerns for the players were a major reason cited for the change in rules by NCAA officials, you can also view it as schools protecting their investments in other ways. It allows schools to get more use out of players, particularly those they have invested scholarship money and recruiting funds in acquiring.
It also would seem to keep players who don’t immediately figure in the lineups interested and engaged in day-to-day practice and preparation knowing that they now have a better chance of being activated. It remains to be seen if it will reduce transfers over the long haul.
While there is something to like about the new rule for all of his brethren, few are likely to appreciate it more off the bat than Rolovich.