It is my fervent belief that experience, when it comes to college football players, is overrated. In alcohol-aided discussions and fervent text message battles, I've used the considerable and immediate success of numerous redshirt freshman quarterbacks as evidence of my superiority. Johnny Manziel. Andrew Luck. Colt McCoy. Sam Bradford. Vince Young. All of them succeeded from day one as redshirt freshmen. Of course, it is possible that those guys are in the top 0.5 percent of the top 0.5 percent of college football players and would have succeeded just as well as true freshmen.
Mark Richt, though, disagrees with my stance.
“I don’t think as much about redshirting guys as I used to,” Richt told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Because not many guys stay five years anyway. Even if they play just a little bit they’re just so much more ready to play.
“There’s so many guys that a year from now are gonna have to play. So if you know a guy’s gonna have to play for you next year, you might oughta get him as many reps as you can possibly get him. Because if he’s a redshirt freshman he’s almost like a true freshman in a lot of ways. So I’d rather have a true sophomore that’s got a few plays under his belt than a redshirt freshman that hasn’t played a game.”
Richt has played 21 of his 27 true freshmen this year - most in the nation, according to Georgia. Of the six freshmen who have not yet played, four are offensive linemen.