I thought I had heard at one point that per Pac-12 rules, traveling with the team and suiting up for conference games costs a year of eligibility (regardless of whether or not a player takes a snap).

Can anyone clarify?

(Obligatory "Fire Tedford" comment: I'm curious how many years our next HC will get with young Zach Kline.)

I've never heard that and beyond that it would be silly to have different rules in the p-12 than the rest of teh NCAA.

Nope. There is only the NCAA rule re redshirting. The NCAA most protected rules are those that defend its own preeminence as an authority - so no conflicting conference rules are allowed in general. Read the NCAA bylaws - they are pretty interesting. And crazy. Its absolutely crazy that the NCaA has so much power given to them voluntarily by schools based solely on the money they get from the march madness tourney.

sorry, I've been using the redshirt thing as a joke regarding Bigelow (using it as an excuse to explain his lack of touches).

Because
a) I never saw him play... just all the sudden the scoreboard changed by 6 or 7.
b) it is not considered playing if you are not tackled on the field of play
c) the other team has no idea where he is, why should we think the NCAA would be any better at finding him on the field?
d) on replay he is no more than a blur, even in slo-mo. There is no indisputable video evidence that he played
.... (I'm sure you all could come up with funnier reasons)