Brent Brennan confirms Arizona RB Rayshon Luke will redshirt, work with scout team

Arizona running back Rayshon Luke is going to stop playing and redshirt the 2024 season after four games, head coach Brent Brennan confirmed on Thursday.

Luke will continue to be with the team and play on the scout team in practice, Brennan said. While others have redshirted after four games to preserve eligibility to transfer, it’s unclear if Luke intends to do that or simply develop and try to play more at Arizona in the future.

“This is a decision that he and his family made and so we respect it,” Brennan said. He’s going to be a great teammate and a great scout team player and he’s going to help us prepare every week. He’s a great kid and he’s doing great in school, so we respect it.”

Luke, a third-year back for the Wildcats, has appeared in 24 career games, including four to start the 2024 campaign. NCAA rules allow a player to play in up to four games in a season and still redshirt to preserve the year of eligibility (bowl games don’t count toward that total) if a player hasn’t already used it. Playing in seven games as a true freshman and 13 as a sophomore, Luke had the potential to redshirt sitting in his back pocket.

And while at Arizona, Luke has primarily served as a backup and rotational running back. He’s carried the ball 56 times for 271 yards and a touchdown. He’s also got 11 receptions for 148 yards, including a career high six this year.

Though it remains unclear at this point if Luke will ultimately transfer, his decision to sit out and redshirt and do so would fit into a growing trend that’s emerged in college football in 2024, as a wave of players in recent weeks have opted to preserve a year of eligibility and get ready to transfer. And though this trend might be emerging now, the move to redshirt in-season is not exactly a new one.

In 2018, Clemson quarterback Kelly Bryant announced after the first four games of the season that he would sit out and redshirt, thus preserving his final year of eligibility so he could transfer elsewhere.

Bryant ended up at Missouri, and his decision also paved the way for Trevor Lawrence to become the starting quarterback at Clemson. He had already been nipping at Bryant’s heels prior to the decision to redshirt and transfer, one that now appears to be an early domino in the cascade of players trying to take more control over their careers.