With 3 days left until National Signing Day, Alabama is beginning to narrow down its class and make its final pushes, and necessary decisions for the better of the team. One of these necessary decisions can be asking a recruit to grayshirt. A grayshirt is when the prospect that signs a letter of intent in February, but doesn’t report in the fall with his teammates. He delays his enrollment into the university until midyear, i.e. January. That NCAA five-year clock doesn’t start ticking until the player enrolls as a full time student, so gray-shirting is basically a delayed version of red-shirting.
Asking a prospect to grayshirt is not always done, but Alabama has used it the last two years, asking OLB Christian Bell to do so in 2015 and asking Riley Cole, a 3-star LB out of Oneonta, AL to do the same in 2016. Bell took that offer and used that time to prepare himself and has enrolled this semester, looking to make an impact in 2016. Cole on the other hand did not take that news so well and has made the decision to decommit from the Tide. He made it known through his Twitter account
https://twitter.com/Rileyc44/status/693869705275248640
Cole’s decommitment is one nobody really saw coming, but that leaves a spot open for another linebacker such as Ben Davis, Mique Juarez, Lyndell “Mack” Wilson or Dontavious Jackson. Cole currently holds offers from South Alabama and Wake Forest as well as interest from Kentucky and Mississippi State.
Justin Wagner is the Lead Recruiting Analyst for Touchdown Alabama. You can follow him on Twitter, at @jwag718.
