NCAA proposal would stop schools, coaches from holding transfers hostage

It’s one of the paradoxes of college athletics: while coaches and administrators are essentially free to leave one school for another, athletes face various restrictions in doing the same thing. But the NCAA’s transfer rules might soon tilt away from schools and toward college athletes — at least a little — a move that is long overdue.

The Division I Council Transfer Working Group is considering a change to the rule that allows schools to essentially control where athletes can transfer. The current rule requires athletes to get permission from their current school before talking with other schools. Although the schools cannot bar their transfer, an athlete who didn’t get a release to contact from his former school is barred from receiving an athletic scholarship from the destination school.

The most recent example was only a few weeks ago, when Kansas State football player Corey Sutton initially was denied permission to contact any of the 35 schools he said he had requested, and called Wildcats’ coach Bill Snyder a “slave master” in a tweet. Snyder publicly defended his decision not to grant Sutton’s request, but Kansas State relented shortly afterward, freeing up Sutton to transfer to Appalachian State.

Corey Sutton has received his release from Kansas State coach Bill Snyder

Cam Johnson makes case for release from Pitt, transfer to North Carolina

But creating heat for schools by going public has been the only real recourse for athletes like Sutton. 

The proposed change would allow athletes to receive scholarships after transferring regardless of whether they’d received permission to talk with other schools about transferring. Sutton, for example, would not have needed Snyder’s permission to transfer to Appalachian State or anywhere else.

At this point, it’s only an idea; the working group wants feedback from NCAA schools over the next few months. But the change could be voted on as early as April. If enacted, it would be a big step toward benefiting athletes. But since this is the NCAA there’s also potential trouble ahead.

The working group also tackled the topic of graduate transfers, where players who have earned an undergraduate degree but still have eligibility are allowed to transfer and play immediately while pursuing a graduate degree.

There has been concern among some coaches and administrators over the rising trend of athletes who’ve taken advantage of the rule in the five years since it was enacted — never mind that in graduating, the athletes have achieved what they’re supposed to have been in school to achieve.

Especially in men’s basketball, graduate transfers have become a quick way for schools to replenish rosters with veteran players. In football, graduate transfers at high-profile positions have become routine, with varying results. Along with concern over whether the athletes are actually pursuing graduate degrees, the rising trend has created questions about whether and how potential graduate transfers are essentially recruited by schools.

Though there’s no push to prohibit immediate eligibility for graduate transfers, the working group wants to find ways to hold the destination schools accountable, either through requiring schools to count the transfers against their team’s scholarship limits for two years, regardless of whether the player is still there, or by adding graduate transfers into the Academic Progress Rate (APR), which penalizes schools that don’t meet benchmarks. And it wants coaches to face penalties for breaking rules in recruiting potential graduate transfers.

Those might make sense, but they also could potentially limit graduate transfers — which amount to “less than one-half of 1 percent” of Division I athletes, according to data collected by the NCAA.

A more difficult issue might loom down the road. 

The working group also would like to make sure conferences don’t have policies that would be more restrictive than NCAA transfer rules, which is a good idea. But it also considered whether transfer rules in every sport should be the same (currently, players in some sports must sit out a year after transferring, while players in other sports are immediately eligible).
Among the problems with achieving uniformity: Which way would the rule change go — every transfer in any sport has to wait a year, or everybody is immediately eligible? 

If the goal is really to benefit the players, that would seem simple: Let ‘em transfer and play right away. But that seems unlikely to happen — the last thing the NCAA wants is essentially unlimited transfers. On the other hand, forcing transfers in every sport to sit out a season just to have the same rule across the board would be overkill — and would be 180 degrees away from the idea of benefiting the athletes.

It seems more likely the transfer rules remain a sport-by-sport thing. But then, it’s the NCAA, where things rarely make sense — so who knows?