Michael Cobbins’ Three-Game Suspension Illustrates Power of Redshirt Rule
Posted by Chris Stone on November 10th, 2014Oklahoma State redshirt senior Michael Cobbins will miss the Cowboys’ opening three games of the regular season as penance for playing in two non-conference regular season games during his true freshman season. Cobbins played in a combined five minutes against Houston Baptist and Nicholls State during the 2010-11 season, prior to sitting out the remainder of the year as a medical redshirt. Unfortunately for Cobbins, NCAA rules require that a player must sit out two competitions for each game in which he appeared during his redshirt season (excluding scrimmages and exhibition games for freshmen). After Wisconsin’s Duje Dukan was able to count a closed scrimmage and an exhibition game toward his required total in a similar situation, Oklahoma State asked the NCAA to count its exhibition game against Missouri Western as one of the games Cobbins was required to miss. That request was granted late last week, and as a result, Cobbins sat out the Cowboys’ Saturday exhibition. Still, as a result of playing those 300 ticks of the clock some four years ago, the key frontcourt contributor will be unavailable for the Cowboys’ first three games of the 2014-15 campaign.
While the two-for-one rule seems somewhat arbitrary, Oklahoma State is lucky to have Cobbins available at all this season. According to NCAA rules, a single second of action in a regular season game is sufficient to cost a player a full year of eligibility. The requirement is aimed at preventing a coach from using a potential redshirted player in a substantial number of games by requiring the player to miss a substantially larger number of games in the future. This removes the incentive for a coach to burn a good portion of a player’s season of eligibility by effectively trying him out at the beginning of a season to see how he performs — the NCAA is forcing coaches to make redshirt decisions on players sooner than later.