The article mentioned "5 years to play 4".
I don't know exactly what that means.

I know in D1 wrestling there a lot of guys who take a redshirt in other then their freshman year.So that would be 5 years,in school,but competing in four.

I know when I was in college,in addition to the 1 year transfer rule,you also had 6 years from the date you first enrolled in school,to use your 4 years of eligibility.

A friend of mine started college then,after his freshman year, he took 2 years off to save up money for school.
When he came back he decided to go out for soccer.
Even though he never played a sport,the NCAA rules said he only had 3 years of eligibilty left.

According to the article, the proposal is that a redshirt can play four games PER SEASON without losing a year's eligibility. Does this mean that someone could play four games this year and have four years eligibility left, then play four games next year and still have four years eligibility left, then play four games the year after and still have four years eligibility left, and so on? I know its absurd, and it could just be poor wordsmithing by Andrea. [/QUOTE]There's still the rule that a player essentially has five years to play four unless given a medical redshirt, so it would only make sense to do it once.

[QUOTE=Pataskala] Here's another suggestion: Why not give each player 48 games of eligibility, excluding postseason games, the game the player got hurt in and any game the player doesn't play in. That's the equivalent of four regular seasons. It would do away with the need for asking for a fifth (or sixth or seventh) year of eligibility. So if a player gets hurt in the fourth game of his freshman year, only three games would count and he would still have 45 games of eligibility.