Beyond the Pros and Cons of Redshirting

Updated at 5:34 p.m. ET on March 11, 2021.

If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, you probably remember the argument he makes in the book’s first chapter: In competitive situations, a person who’s relatively older than the others will probably be the one who wins.

Gladwell centers on a real-world example in which almost all of the players who had been selected for a Canadian Hockey League team had birthdays in the first four months of the year. Why? In Canada, Gladwell reasons, the cut-off age for participating in the sport is almost always January 1. A child who, say, turns 11 on January 4 would still play alongside a child who turns 11 much later in the year—and at that stage in life, there are typically significant and abilities between two such kids. Gladwell concludes that in Canada, the world’s hockey capital, this policy puts the two children on two very different paths from the get go; the older, more physically developed one gets selected for all-star teams, which means better coaching, resources, and practice opportunities, and, ultimately,