The letters next to Chason Virgil’s height (6-foot-1) and weight (190 pounds) on the Fresno State football roster read “RFr.”
In the vocab of college sports, that means redshirt freshman. It’s the designation for a player who is an academic sophomore but a freshman with respect to athletic eligibility.
Except it doesn’t really do Virgil justice. For one, he played in three games last season before suffering a broken clavicle that prompted the NCAA to grant him a medical hardship waiver. That’s three more than most redshirts get.
What’s more, Virgil had a head start.