The NCAA has an increasingly long history of doing that things that frustrates me and grinds my gears. There isn’t a week that goes by in which they seem to do something that draws the reaction: ” What the hell are they doing?”.
So it doesn’t surprise me at all that the NCAA and various administrators are looking to take something away that has been beneficial to student-athletes for years now. Color me surprised that the NCAA is looking to do away with something that doesn’t directly benefit them or their pockets.
The graduate transfer route is something that has been used by student-athletes who have already received their undergraduate degree at their current university and allows them to transfer to another school of their choice with immediate eligibility if the school they are seeking to transfer to offers a graduate program that isn’t offered at their current school.
Most recently players such as Notre Dame’s Everett Golson, and Eastern Washington’s Vernon Adams have utilized this rule so that they could do what’s best for them and transfer to another school so they can showcase their talents. While Golson is looking to transfer from one Division I program to another, Adams is the rare case in which a player from a lower division transferred up to a Division I school (Oregon).
Adams’ decision to transfer to Oregon has drawn the ire of not only of people at Eastern Washington, but of administrators elsewhere.
“I don’t think [the rule] fits into the core values of intercollegiate athletics,” Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson told reporters recently. “The kid from Eastern Washington is going to Oregon — and [Eastern Washington is] opening the season [against] them. It just doesn’t feel right.”
“What message does that send to his teammates that have been sweating and bleeding with him for three years?” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told CBSSports.com. “He gets a better offer and jumps ship. I’m not sure that’s a great message to send to a group of teammates.”
So a kid decides to utilize a rule put in place by the NCAA to transfer to a school that gives him an opportunity to start, play on a bigger stage, and possibly increase his NFL draft stock, but him doing that is sending the wrong message? The people that are sending the wrong message are the ones trying to convince us that a kid doing what is best for him is the wrong thing to do despite the them making similar moves professionally.
As NCAA matters go, their hypocrisy is unsurprising, yet no less infuriating.
In 2012, Benson left a job he’d held for 18 years as commissioner of the WAC when it became apparent that conference was crumbling. (It dropped football a year later.) He now oversees a more stable conference. That same year, Bowlsby left his post as athletic director at Stanford, whose football program he’d helped rescue from the ashes, to take a prestigious job as commissioner of one of the Power 5 conferences.
As adults with college degrees, no one questioned either’s right to better themselves professionally. They earned those opportunities thanks to strong performances in their chosen field.
These administrators and coaches are being pickers of the nit variety as they point out that athletes who utilize this rule don’t spend more than one semester in the program that they choose.
“If you’re transferring to be in a graduate program, the NCAA wants you to be working in earnest toward that degree rather than just using up your last year of eligibility,” NCAA VP Kevin Lennon told the Associated Press.
“The number of graduate transfers isn’t exactly marrying up with the number of graduate degrees. That raises a red flag for me,” said Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott. “We want to encourage student-athletes getting their graduate degrees. I don’t think we want to encourage people using a loophole to get another year of eligibility.”
“They’re not going to that school for their so-called specific masters degree,” said Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez. “They’re going there because the playing situation is better for them. And I think everyone knows that.”
So because they use the rule to their advantage and don’t actually finish a Masters degree (despite already having one degree in hand) lets cast shame upon the athletes? Seems like total malarkey to me. It seems like administrators and coaches are looking to tighten the proverbial noose around the throat of student-athletes that is already pretty damn tight as is.
While it seems that a group of administrators and coaches want to do away with the rule, there is also a group who doesn’t seem to have their heads buried in the sand and are perfectly fine with athletes using the rule.
“If we can go get a million-dollar contract somewhere else, why can’t the player leave?” said Akron coach Terry Bowden. “It’s no different than schools that want to get rid of a coach or a coach that wants to leave in the middle of his five-year contract. Nobody stops them.”
You might think Stanford’s David Shaw would oppose the rule. For one thing, he’s the coach at one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions. If something’s perceived to be making a mockery of academics, he’s likely to be among the chief critics. Furthermore, since nearly all of his players graduate in four years, his team is more ripe than most to lose them. This offseason alone, Stanford has added one grad transfer, Cal defensive end Brennan Scarlett, but lost four of its own, including former starting cornerback Wayne Lyons to Michigan.
“I’ve been excited for those guys,” said Shaw. “They fulfilled their part, they got their undergraduate degree, they’re college graduates. If they want to use that fifth year somewhere else at a different program, I personally see no problem with that.”
Whoa. Sanity.
I applaud coaches like Bowden and Shaw for not being as obtuse as the rest of their colleagues. They understand that at the end of the day the kids looking to use this rule have not only spent several years at their current school, but they also achieved the primary goal the NCAA has set for its student-athletes which is receiving a diploma.
If a student-athlete has put in the time to earn a degree, then who the hell is any administrator or coach to say what they can or can’t do if they decide to go the graduate transfer route? Who is the NCAA to force a player to stay put at a school or deny the them the right to use a rule put in place for THEM if they have already received a degree from one institution?
This is a horrible double standard being put in place by the NCAA, as it has become common practice to make student-athletes jump through hoops lit on fire to transfer, but yet they allow coaches who sign multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts to jump ship whenever a better opportunity arises. How is it fair that the people with the least power continue to get held to the highest standards? That seems backwards as hell to me.
All of this is right on the heels of critical issues involving student-athletes and how they are taken care of by the NCAA and their institutions.
Just last year, college athletics leaders were falling all over themselves to push through so-called “student-athlete welfare” initiatives. With the power conferences awash in massive TV and postseason revenue and facing pushback like ex-Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter’s unionization bid, the NCAA finally approved benefits like full cost-of-attendance scholarships, unlimited meals and travel reimbursement for players’ families.
Now, in 2015, the big reform push appears to be academics, from Jim Delany’s “year of readiness” (freshman ineligibility) proposal to the transfer initiative. While noble-minded in theory, so far administrators’ best ideas involve eliminating playing opportunities that athletes currently enjoy.
Undergraduate transfers were already highly restricted, and now, beginning this fall, the NCAA has eliminated hardship waivers that certain athletes with troubled situations like a family illness back home applied for to attain immediate eligibility.
The NCAA must have been playing nice just get the pressure off their back, because if they eliminate the graduate transfer rule they will be right back in the line of fire (they will always be there anyway). This is just a case of the NCAA taking a few steps forward, then immediately taking ten steps back and just proves that they will continue to fight against those who want to give athletes more rights and control.
This is just reason number 14349340230 why people don’t think very highly of the NCAA and while they will never be viewed in a favorable light.