5-year plan has fans

Big 12 Conference commissioner Dan Beebe is the latest high-ranking official to propose five seasons of eligibility with no redshirting for all college football players.

It's a suggestion that deserves more attention from the NCAA than has been the case previously.

The ACC, a few years back, attempted to advance the same plan, but with little success. Even within the league, there was substantial opposition from school administrations to giving football such special consideration.

"There's a lot to be said for this idea, and it's been floated for years, since the 1970s actually," said Shane Lyons, ACC assistant commissioner for governance and compliance.

Since that time, the football landscape has changed so quickly that a five-year policy, if examined closely, makes all sorts of sense. Here are just a few points that need to be taken into account by the NCAA membership:

* The 12-game regular season puts more strain on rosters limited to 85 scholarship players in the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A).

* Redshirt rules have become so fragmented that the original concept is almost antiquated. The NCAA now virtually decides case-by-case on dozens of applications for redshirt seasons. Injuries, family conflicts and religious commitments have been added to the list of possible qualifications for something originally intended to simply give players a sabbatical game year, usually the freshman year, to make the adjustment from high school to college.

* With more third-year players opting for the NFL draft each year, the quality of performance is suffering more than necessary. The overwhelming majority of collegians never play a down in the pros, but most would be more effective at the college level if given an additional season of competitive experience.

* A fifth season for all players should ease the pressure on coaches to make risky recruiting decisions. Present a coach with a quick-fix dilemma and you could put that coach in fast-and-loose territory. The more pressing the personnel need, the more the temptation arises to disregard warning signals about prospects.

The big bonus would be improved academic performance.

"There's no question whatsoever that graduation rates would improve significantly," N.C. State coach Tom O'Brien said. "This plan is a win-win-win situation. It would be better for academics, better for players and for fans. They would see a higher level of execution on the field."

O'Brien estimates that "at least" 90 percent of all college coaches have favored the five-year switch for years.

"I can't think of one coach who's really against it," he said. "When you take into account that the average college student now needs four-plus years to graduate, that, alone, should be enough to give this thing some serious traction. Now, maybe the fair thing to do would be to consider five years of eligibility for all scholarship athletes. It certainly wouldn't increase the number of scholarships any sport would have to use."

Lyons said that if adopted, not all players would want or need the fifth year.

"For those who graduated in four years and wanted to move on, that option would be there, of course," Lyons said. "But this plan, I think, would greatly increase the motivation to graduate for a number of players. There would be a lot who want to come back and complete their degree requirements if they still had one year of eligibility on the field."

Could the proposal one day be enacted? Beebe, Lyons and O'Brien all think it's a long shot but not completely impossible. A lot of research and hoop-jumping would be required by NCAA subcommittees, but rules changes occur almost every year in any number of sports.

"At the very least, the NCAA should give it a good, serious review," O'Brien said. "Just look into it, get some solid information and weigh the pros and cons -- what could possibly be bad about doing that?"

Even Wake Forest coach Jim Grobe, the undisputed master of the redshirt strategy, favors at least a conditional five-year format.

"If the coaches were allowed to let those redshirt guys in for a few plays on special teams and maybe just for home games, it would do wonders for their morale," Grobe said. "It's not easy on a youngster to go through a whole season of practice and know he's not going to get into a game at all. And at the other end of the process, I think it would improve graduation numbers. There's a lot of good in this plan."