Opting out (or not) for dummies: A guide for players considering a midseason redshirt

When the newsbreaker post thread announcing that a college football player will opt out of the remainder of a season names not one but two agents, you know that player is open for business. Consider the second of three consecutive posts by ESPN’s Pete Thamel on Monday delivering the news that Alabama defensive lineman Jeheim Oatis is leaving the Crimson Tide after playing in four games this season so he can redshirt and preserve a year of eligibility.

Considering his pedigree, traits and position, he’ll be a coveted player in the portal. Oatis will be represented by Adie von Gontard and Noah Reisenfeld of Young Money APAA Sports.

— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) October 7, 2024

The question in such cases is whether that agency braintrust helped the player make a good business decision. This one probably didn’t.

I’m happy to laugh at school leaders who try to move heaven and earth to keep players from becoming employees and then whine when they suffer the obvious consequences of not having the employer-side protection offered by an employment contract. But just because a player can leave at any time and go to another school doesn’t necessarily mean it’s in his best long-term interests to do that.

For Oatis —who started three games for the Crimson Tide last season despite battling injuries that dented his playing time — leaving now could be a net negative. For former Georgia and USC defensive tackle Bear Alexander, leaving the Trojans a few weeks ago probably will be a net negative. For Kaleb Brown, the one-time Ohio State receiver who left Iowa on Monday to preserve a redshirt season, departing midseason might ultimately help in the long run.

Not every situation is equal, so let’s break down when a player should stick it out and when he should consider exercising the option to preserve the redshirt*.

*One possible solution to this unintended consequence of the combination of the four-game redshirt rule — pushed by coaches in 2018 to preserve depth — and the elimination of the transfer rules due to legal challenges is for schools to embrace something coaches have been pushing for decades: giving players five years to play five instead of five years to play four. Eliminating the developmental redshirt, while leaving open the possibility of medical hardships to extend careers beset by season-ending injuries, would take away this leverage point and eliminate any incentive for players to quit midseason.

First, any player considering this needs to understand that no matter how the agency that represents him spins it, the player is quitting on his team. The fans of that team and the coaches from that team likely will view him forever as a quitter. So might most of his teammates, though they’re more likely to have some empathy because they may have faced a similar situation. 

That may not matter to a player who will reap significant financial benefit from a move, but as we’ll likely see as these scenarios play out across years, the move might actually have negative financial consequences.

Who should leave midseason to preserve a redshirt? Ideally, no one. And there are a lot more players who never would consider such a move (even if it did provide a payday) than players who would. But there is group that should consider preserving as much eligibility as possible: Players who aren’t going to spend much (or any) time in the NFL.

Brown couldn’t climb the depth chart at Ohio State, and there’s no shame in that. Jameson Williams got stuck in a logjam in Columbus, transferred to Alabama and became a first-rounder. But Brown hasn’t become a dynamic target in one-plus seasons at Iowa, either. (Feel free to question the judgment of any receiver who willingly transferred to play in Brian Ferentz’s Iowa offense as Brown did between the 2022 and 2023 seasons.) Though Brown obviously can still prove us wrong, we may have enough of a sample size to predict that he likely isn’t going to have a productive pro football career. 

So, with NIL money available at the college level, it’s probably in his best interest to preserve as many years of eligibility as possible. By leaving Iowa now, he has two more college seasons instead of one to earn NIL money. After that, he probably transitions to a non-football job. Even in the lower reaches of the power conferences, the NIL money is better than what the average 22-year-old college grad will make. So another year of that would be a net positive.

Brown’s Iowa teammate Leshon Williams made a similar move Monday, but he did it to preserve his only other chance to play in college. Williams’ eligibility would have expired after this season had he played in five games. So Williams, who led Iowa in rushing in 2023 but dealt with injuries in camp and saw his carries dwindle, left now to get one more year in college. He might have a pro future, but his career so far suggests otherwise.

This also likely factored into quarterback Matthew Sluka’s recent decision to leave UNLV. Sluka claimed UNLV didn’t deliver on promised NIL money. Sluka also is in his final season of college eligibility after spending four years at Holy Cross. Had Sluka reached the five-game mark, his college career would have ended after this season. Sluka probably isn’t an NFL quarterback, so his only real opportunity to make money playing football likely will come next season. (Unless the play of Hajj-Malik Williams, the backup who has thus far outperformed Sluka as his replacement, dries up the market for Sluka.)

So what makes Oatis’ and Alexander’s situation different?

They’re 300-plus pound defensive linemen who are quicker than some running backs. There will be an opportunity for them in the NFL, even if they never live up to their recruiting hype in college. 

Oatis and Alexander each had a year of eligibility remaining after this one, so by leaving their teams midseason, they’re actually preserving their chance to play in college in 2026. But here’s the catch: If they’re good next year at their new school, they won’t need (or want) to play in college in 2026. And quitting on their teams now is only going to raise questions that will ultimately lower their initial NFL salaries. Alexander played for four different high schools and is now headed to his third college, so none of this is surprising in his case. He’s been advised to move a lot, and it probably hasn’t helped him. Oatis’ case is different, but the underlying future considerations are similar.

This is the part where you argue that Micah Parsons opted out at Penn State in 2020 and still got picked in the first round. He did, but his conference also canceled the season before backtracking. Also, he’d already proven his first-round bona fides. These guys haven’t come close to that.

Alexander and Oatis were playing less than they wanted, so they want to move somewhere else where they’ll play more. That’s a perfectly acceptable reason to want to move — after the season. Moving now only invites questions from NFL teams about dedication and the ability to adapt to adverse circumstances. Neither player should be surprised if an NFL coach or scout asks this question: “How do you think you’ll handle the competition for jobs in the NFL when you refused to compete for two more months in college?”

The goal for players with the prodigious physical gifts bestowed upon Alexander and Oatis isn’t to make it to the NFL. The league will welcome anyone with their combination of size and speed into a training camp. (The rest is up to them.) The goal is to reach a second contract — and specifically to reach a second contract as quickly as possible. That’s where the life-changing money is. That’s where the signing bonuses soar into eight figures. To put it in the parlance of Lil’ Wayne, the founder of the agency that represents Oatis, NIL money is a goon. The second NFL contract is a goblin.

So why do anything that might delay the countdown to contract No. 2? Alexander or Oatis could have stayed with their teams and kept working. Perhaps they would have been called upon to play a bigger role because someone got hurt during a long season. And perhaps they’d put out some good tape during that time that could increase their NIL earnings next year and their draft positions in 2026. Or perhaps they created enough good tape in that time to go to the NFL in 2025 and start their clocks even earlier.

Instead, they left. That will only raise questions from the people who actually can sign them to employment contracts to play football. So unless the players — or the people who represent them — have given up on the idea of them succeeding in the NFL, they probably would have been better off staying put until the end of the season.