How Many Years Can You PLay College Football? Bo Nix played College Football for 5 seasons
Bo Nix in his fifth season of eligibility at Oregon – Image Courtesy Oregon Live

Every now and again you see a player in a College Football opening line up that is well into his late twenties. This is startling at first, but perhaps even more startling when it feels like your team has played him every single year since you’ve been a fan. These are the JT Barrett’s and Bo Nix’s of the world. So, how long can you actually play College Football?

The short answer is, as with other NCAA sports, you can play College Football for four seasons within a five year window. After that, your NCAA eligibility is expired and you can no longer play. That being said, there are a number of exceptions to this rule.

First of all, a College Football player can do what’s called “redshirting”. Redshirting is when you gain an additional year of eligibility by not being fully active with the team. To redshirt, a player can practice with the team and play in up to four games, but no more. If this applies, they’re eligible to redshirt and earn an additional year of eligibility.

How Many Years Can You Play College Football? JT Daniels played 6 seasons of college football before medical retirement
JT Daniels is in his sixth season of eligibility at Rice – Image Courtesy of Click2Houston

Players can also earn “Medical Redshirts” in addition to the traditional Redshirt for a younger player not quite worth of starting all season. Medical Redshirts are granted by the NCAA when a player missed a significant part of the season due to injury or medical concern. The player must have been injured before the halfway point of the season, have played less than 30% of games, and had an injury or medical concern that’s “season ending” (of course, with the usual exceptions).

Furthermore, COVID played a huge factor for any College Football athlete that was on the team during the outbreak of the pandemic. The NCAA granted an additional year of eligibility to athletes due to the large impact on the season, with most schools cutting their number of games and some not even fielding a team. This is how some active College Football players are in their fifth or sixth season (looking at you, JT Daniels).

So, how long can a player really play? Cam McCormick (Miami) played a whopping nine seasons of College Football, and Kyle Pugh (NIU) played eight, for a few examples.

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