College Football as a Freshman -Hardest Year?
Well aside from the obvious you don’t know many people, your away from home. Freshman year is the toughest year of your college career because your fresh out of high school. You prolly were an all state player, started varsity for a few seasons, and well known in your community. Now your just a freshman. That can change if you don’t red-shirt and you have a spectacular season as a true freshman. For those that don’t know, red shirt is when you sit out a year in college football and don’t play, you just practice and do everthing else with the team.
It’s not a game no more, It’s a business
Lets assume you are red shirting as a freshman on your college football team. You immediately notice a big difference between high school and college football. That is: It is not a game anymore this is a business. College football is a business for many reasons. The main reason being that jobs are at stake everyday. You see more of it now in college football, coaches are getting fired left and right. The majority get fired for having a losing season but there have been cases where coaches have been fired for other reasons I wont discuss.
Your Job is at Stake
You thought it was just the coaches? Your job is at stake as well. Everytime you go out to practice you are competing for a spot on the roster. I honestly relizedthis my second year, when I took the seniors spot. I felt like he can’t get mad at me, I competed for his spot and got it, it wasn’t given to me learned it. Your job isn’t just at stake as far as playing time either. Its at stake as far as being at the university. In case you are like me and the many other freshman who thought their scholarship was gauranteed, it’s not. When I was talking to scouts and coaches as a senior in high school my impression was that they were offering me a 4-5(5=red-shirt) full scholarship. Not until the end of my first semester as freshman did I know that my scholarship was renewal. That meant every semester I would be signing a new scholarship for the upcomming semester. I guess it is a way to cover the coaching staff when they need to release a player from their program.
Proving yourself Now you have to prove yourself.
I was on scout team as a freshman. I’ll admit I didn’t practice much for the first half of the season because of injuries and illness. In our last scrimmage a week before the season I sprained my ankle real bad, I was playing with the second team offense and a Defensive lineman fell on my ankle. I was out for about 4 weeks. Then when I came back I got real sick so I missed about another week and a half. But back to proving yourself. In our program if you were a red shirt they would still let you fly with the team to away games, but you had to earn this privelage. So I was on scout team and I’ve never been scared of nobody. I was in front of a defensive tackle an NFL prospect at the time, we called him “Big Nasty” he was just that good. Anyhow I came off the ball and used every fundamental technique I could remember: Stay low, arm action, run my feet thru contact and roll my hips. And I pancaked him. The offensive coaches were watching that on film all week. And friday they announced that I would be traveling with the team. That was the beginning of me proving myself.
In our spring football season I played well and earned an award “The Biggest Surprise on Offense.” I guess it’s pretty much self explanatory but till this day I want to know was it a surprise because I was a 230Lb redshirt freshman pancaking starters or just because I hadn’t practiced much during the regular season and they were surprised to really see me doing so good.
Just like that you made it
Well you make to your spring football game and the rest is history you have successfully completed your freshman year of college football. You have adjusted to having multiple meetings, sunday practices & working out in the morning before class. That wasn’t so hard after all.