Louisville commit asked to grayshirt right before signing day
Matt Colburn was verbally committed to Louisville since June. That changed on Monday.
According to multiple outlets, Louisville pulled its scholarship offer from Colburn, a Rivals three-star running back from Dutch Fork High School in Irmo, S.C. Instead of signing his national letter of intent with the Cardinals on Wednesday with the rest of the program’s 2015 class, Louisville has extended a grayshirt offer for Colburn, which would delay his enrollment until January.
Colburn told the Courier-Journal that Louisville assistant Tony Grantham said the team “needed additional defensive backs” in its 2015 class, so the program could not accept his letter of intent this week. Louisville lost three defensive backs to early entry for the NFL draft.
Understandably, Colburn is not too happy with the way things played out.
“It’s been about eight months now that I’ve been committed, and I feel kind of short-changed because I got this [recruitment] taken care of before the season started so I wouldn’t have to worry about this anymore,” Colburn told the Courier-Journal. “But I guess that’s just the way it is sometimes.
“They said they tried to work it out any way possible, but it just wouldn’t work out with the numbers they had. They just had to go with their priorities, and their priority was DBs. They’re not taking any running backs as far as I’m concerned.”
Colburn and his high school coaches reached out to several other schools on Monday to see if they had any interest. Colburn cut off contact with other programs following his commitment to Louisville, but now he finds himself open again.
Colburn’s high school coach, Tom Knotts, told The State that the running back has many FCS offers, as well as an offer from Navy. The grayshirt offer from Louisville is still an option, too.
“We don’t have an ACC or SEC offer yet and that’s what we’re trying to secure,” Knotts said. “He’s considering everything at this point but we’re still shocked. Those coaches might not be there in another year so it could happen again in January. The trust factor with Louisville is gone. It’s not off the table but I wouldn’t think he would consider that. I encouraged him to think about it though because signing with Louisville is still an option.”
Louisville certainly isn’t the first program to use this tactic of roster management, but that doesn’t make it any less brutal for Colburn to have the rug pulled out from under him and to now make a life-changing decision in an extremely short period of time.
For more Louisville news, visit CardinalSports.com.
- - - - - - -
Sam Cooper is a contributor for the Yahoo Sports blogs. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!
