Nebraska fans are seeing a new kind of roster label this year, but it does not mean anyone on the Huskers just lost eligibility.
The school is moving away from the word “redshirt” on official rosters as college athletics adjusts to the NCAA’s new age-based five-in-five model. Under that setup, players have five years to use five seasons, and Nebraska is now classifying athletes by where they stand in that span rather than by the old redshirt language.
That change can make things look strange at first glance. A redshirt freshman on the football roster was recently listed as a sophomore.
Redshirt sophomores became juniors. The same shift is happening in men’s basketball, and other sports will follow.
But the key point remains the same: nobody is losing a year.
The new system is really about showing how much eligibility a player still has. Anyone listed as a senior still has a fifth year available.
For some players, that fifth year only became possible when the NCAA adopted the five-in-five model in June. For others, it was already there because they had taken a redshirt.
Cam Lenhardt and Riley Van Poppel are a good example of how the new labels flatten out different paths. Both were 2023 defensive line recruits, but they reached “senior” status in different ways.
Van Poppel had been a redshirt junior, while Lenhardt’s fifth year became an option only because of the NCAA change. Nebraska is now treating them the same way: each is a fourth-year player with a chance to return for a fifth season.
Players who are truly in their last year now get tagged as “Fifth Year,” with “Sixth Year” used in rarer cases like Owen Stoudmire. A dozen Huskers on the football roster carry those post-senior labels heading into the 2026 season.
That means some of the language fans have gotten used to over the spring and summer will start sounding different. Mekhi Nelson, for example, has been called a sophomore, and Kwinten Ives a junior. If those players show up as a junior and a senior instead, that is just Nebraska’s new roster system at work.
The school’s football roster now spells it out plainly: “roster years are listed as follows: freshman; sophomore; junior; senior; fifth/sixth.”
It is a simple enough setup on paper. The harder part may be retraining the way fans think about it. But as the roster fills up with fewer former redshirts, and eventually none, the new labels should start to feel normal.
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