How the new eligibility model could affect Northwestern football

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The college football landscape is wild. What used to be a simple eligibility rule morphed into redshirts, redshirts and more redshirts. The NCAA would like college sports to sit at an amateur model, yes, but the aforementioned model makes that quite difficult. The four-year competition rule allows for a virtually unlimited number of seasons, so long as you’ve been granted a redshirt. With the current rule, athletes can get one redshirt freshman year, a medical redshirt and some also receive an extra year of eligibility if they were on a roster during the 2020-2021 season due to the global pandemic. This allowed for some extreme cases, such as Solomon Tuliaupupu from Montana, who accumulated a total of nine years of eligibility. Now, the new “five-for-five” rule will completely reshape how the college football recruitment and eligibility process looks.

What is the new rule?

The new regulation is quite simple — it eliminates all redshirting while providing an extra year of eligibility. Players can now play up to five seasons without a redshirt. The rule takes an age-based approach of five years, during which they are allowed to take the field. The so-called “clock” starts either when the player enrolls in college or at the start of the academic year following their 19th birthday. So, if a player were to miss a season due to an injury, one of the five eligibility years would still be used up. This now means there is no advantage in taking a redshirt season as a freshman.

What does this look like for recruitment?

This new age-based rule, with no room for redshirting, inherently means freshmen will want to step up and waste no time. As I see it, this can cause two things to begin to develop in the college world.

In one case, a freshman player has no interest in “wasting” their first season by sitting on a power conference bench. It is more than likely that if committed to Northwestern or any Big Ten team, they would see little to no playing time due to the sheer experience and training of the older players. This would cause them to look into FCS or Division II options, using the transfer portal to their advantage to catapult into the big leagues once they develop.

In another case, we see a freshman willing to give up that year of eligibility to train amongst the best in a challenging setting. They know the competition to get playing time is tough, and they will probably have to give up a year while sitting on the bench, but they believe the experience of being in that setting, trying their heart out in practice and knowing all the complexities of the playbook can give them playing time in future seasons.

For Northwestern, this could either mean that the coaches are more willing to give freshmen a chance to play if they prove themselves in practice, or that they dig even more heavily into the transfer portal to grab high-quality players from power conference or FCS schools, just as they did with star wide receiver Griffin Wilde.

What about current players?

A major potential for Northwestern is the key names that could take the field once more. With the new five-year eligibility rule, Griffin Wilde, the Wildcats’ leading wide receiver, will be granted another eligibility year, as he never took a redshirt freshman season. Furthermore, Michigan State transfer quarterback Aidan Chiles, poised to be Northwestern’s starting quarterback, will also gain a year. Michael Kilbane, a high-impact defensive lineman, follows this same pattern. This development is massive as it allows for some Wildcat continuity in a rapidly changing college world. That is, of course, if they don’t hit the transfer portal, which is always a looming threat.

In all, it is hard to tell exactly what these new rules mean for the Wildcats. They are so new, and we have no idea what the transfer portal could look like next year. However, if Northwestern football keeps a solid retention rate (unlike men’s basketball this year), it could have some very experienced players on the field for the next two seasons.

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