COMMENTARY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The fan reaction to JoVanni Stewart’s decision to duck out and redshirt four games into his would-be senior season is to be expected.
Those who call it selfish aren’t wrong. It is the ultimate me-first move, leaving West Virginia in a bit of a scramble prior to last week’s game against Texas.
But given what we are seeing from freshman Tykee Smith, maybe it was also the only way for Stewart to continue his college career on his own terms. At 5-foot-8, Stewart’s NFL future is limited. If he read the writing on the wall that his playing time was about to decline in his last year playing football, is it really wrong for him to rewrite what would have been a disappointing ending?
If anything, this is just one reason the NCAA redshirt rule passed last year is a good thing.
Would you rather have someone leave when they realize their best opportunity is elsewhere, or moping around and poisoning the locker room for the next two months? By all accounts Stewart isn’t that type of teammate, but it’s not hard to imagine some bitter senior telling the freshman or sophomore taking his place, “Just wait until it happens to you.”
For a concrete example, look at how much better the West Virginia basketball team played towards the end of last season when various flotsam and jetsam was cut loose. Now unhappy players can walk away on their own terms rather than waiting for things to come to a boil.
Trained from a young age to have a next-man-up mentality, football players aren’t going to demonstrate an abandonment complex when a teammate departs. To them, a player leaving the program after four games isn’t all that different from a season-ending injury.
“We play with 11 hats at a time,” said senior defensive end Reese Donahue. “JoVanni leaving, I wish the best for him. But you can’t treat it as a big deal. It’s just a guy who decided to take a different path. If we harp on it and act like it’s a big deal, it’s a big deal. But if you push it down and someone steps up, then I think it’s a good thing the way the rules are set up now.”
The Mountaineers knew of Stewart’s decision early enough in the week that Smith was able to pick up all the No. 1 reps at practice – no different than the reaction to a teammate’s MRI result coming in.
“This is the world we live in. This is how college football is doing to be from now on,” Donahue said. “We’re just the first to experience it. But from now on out, this is how it’s going to be. We just have to get used to it.”
West Virginia running back Martell Pettaway provides a more solid example of why the rule that allows players to use a redshirt year even if they have played in as many as four games is a good one.
Injuries to other backs forced Pettaway to play three games as a freshman in 2016. If the legislation was already in place, he would rightfully be a redshirt junior coming back for what should be a much better WVU team in 2020. Instead, his reward for stepping up when the team needed him is a premature end to his college career.
“We were in a hole in that game against Iowa State. There was no one else to put in,” Donahue said. “Ultimately, you’d have Martell for another year if that rule was in place four years ago. That’s rough. This is why this rule has been made. I think it’s a good thing.”