College Football Recruiting - Types of Scholarship Offers

College Football Recruiting - Types of Scholarship Offers
Regardless of whether it's NCAA, NAIA or any JUCO, all athletic associations have maximum scholarship limits per team at each division. But the programs have the option to divide these into partial scholarships to increase the number of student aid.
That’s why many student-athletes and their families are surprised to find that there are different types of offers that students can receive from a school. Let’s go over the most common scholarship offers:
Let’s start with the best scenario. A Full-ride offer
Division 1 FBS teams are allowed 85 scholarships per year for 85 athletes. Unfortunately at this level there are no partial scholarships. There are only full scholarship guys and walk-ons.
A full ride covers tuition, room and board, books, and course fees. Students should keep in mind that while Division 1 schools may provide multiyear scholarships, some scholarships must be renewed each year. In addition, scholarships can be cancelled if the student-athlete becomes ineligible, commits fraud, engages in misconduct or quits the team for personal reasons.
A Partial scholarship offer
For all other NCAA football divisions and collegiate associations, -- programs are given a pool of scholarship money that they can divide amongst their team. There are no restrictions on how many athletes can be on scholarships and the awards may be divided however the coach decides, including offering full scholarships. Now, a partial scholarship offer can still cover a significant portion of college costs or very little. This includes FCS Division 1, Division 2, NAIA and JUCOs. Division 3 and Ivy’s don’t offer athletic scholarships.
A preferred walk-on offer means the coach can’t give you a scholarship but will guarantee you a spot on the team. JJ Watt and Clay Matthews walked-on and bet on themselves and they later earned their scholarship. Since then them and many others have had pro-bowl careers in the NFL.
College football players are classified by their class year. Freshmen, sophomores, juniors or seniors. However, it’s just as common for college football fans to recognize players as redshirt freshmen, sophomores, juniors or seniors when athletes sit out a year of competition. To make things a little more complicated, there are other color shirts to identify student-athletes eligibility statuses.
Redshirt scholarship offer
As I previously mentioned, the most common is a redshirt athlete. If a player redshirts - meaning they don't play for one year - they will have five years to compete in four seasons. A redshirt year is a year in which a player is on scholarship and can practice, but does not play. Many college football players redshirt their freshmen year in order to get physically stronger and prepare for the speed and physicality of the college level. Other players redshirt due to injuries or if they don’t meet certain academic requirements.
A Grayshirt scholarship offer often comes up in recruiting around National Signing Day. A gray-shirt is when a team offers a player enrollment on scholarship at the start of the second semester, after the upcoming season. The athlete still has five years to play four seasons, with the ability to redshirt at some point.
Grayshirts have commonly been used by programs that oversign, which means not having enough roster spots for all of their commits. Sometimes, coaches are up front about grayshirting from the beginning. However, other times, they will force grayshirts on athletes at the last minute, leaving them unable to find schools that will allow them to play immediately.
Athletes who grayshirt are allowed to enroll as students. They go to class for the first semester as part-time students, either at the school or at a junior college, without starting their eligibility clocks. Then they begin as full-time students on scholarship.
A Blueshirt scholarship offer is not very common. It is basically another loophole to get around oversigning.
The blueshirt rule allows schools to put "unrecruited" athletes on scholarship once they arrive on campus, but count them against the next year's scholarship total, as long as they don't play. There are strict rules to be considered an “unrecruited” athlete. IT means there was
• No official visit to the campus;
• No arrangement for in-person or off-campus contact with a coach
• No NLI or other written scholarship offer
• However, the student-athlete can take an unofficial visit since they are technically going at their own expense
The last shirt color is Green. A common term for a greenshirt is "early enrollee." A greenshirt is a player who graduates high school in December of their senior year and opts to enroll in college before Signing Day. Athletes who greenshirt still have five years to play four seasons, so they can still redshirt.

[@mark_kline]

I’ve grey shirted and Red shirted. Grey shirting in the NCAA is taking less than 12 hours a in a semester and less than 10 hours for NAIA. There’s supposedly a rule that says you can’t greyshirt more than once but I couldn’t find anything about it online. But if you don’t want to use a grey shirt, you can take a gap year(not enroll). And then there’s prep schools. So if a kid really wanted to max out their preparation they could go to prep school which still technically counts as high school.
There’s so many loopholes to manipulate the college competition clock. If I had a son, I’d tell him to prepare for two years before playing. Unless he’s some sort of mega star.