I think it's fair to say that 1st semester freshmen have a lot of adjustments to make from their previous day-to-day life. That being said, I think it's borderline ridiculous to give that much credence for poor on-feild performance. If you want to assert that overall, FR and SO's don't perfrom as well as JR and SR's, then yes, I will absolutely agree with that. I don't think any rational person will say otherwise.
But there are a ton of examples of things like: Missouri having a bunch of TX players, Louisville (under Strong) having a lot of FL players, Stanford recruiting nationally, high school players from FL, TX, and CA going to every program in the country, early enrollee's, kids within several hours of home, parents coming to visit, family and friends coming to visit, cell phones, email, text messaging, Skype, students choosing a school because they want to be away from home, student life on campuses that make kids feel like campus is their new home, individual persoanlity traits, etc.
Can we blame an acne breakout or a girl not returning a text message as a reason for a player performing bad? Sure, we can do that as well. We can use a million reasons to explain bad play. But a million of them aren't defensible reasons. After a while, they become excuses.
