by eagletx on Wed Feb 19, 2020 8:03 am
ARTICLE from "The Athletic:
Change appears to be coming to college athletics, and it seems to be coming quicker than anyone could have expected.
One day after the ACC threw its weight behind support for transfer reform, the NCAA’s transfer working group announced on Tuesday that it would explore a concept allowing all athletes in all sports to transfer and play immediately one time during the course of their college careers.
In short, players would be able to move freely and without penalty, like their coaches do — like most college athletes already do in the current system, except for those playing football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball or hockey. This potential change would allow all athletes, including the most high-profile ones, to play by the same rules. It’s called the one-time transfer exception.
From the news release:
The working group concept would change waiver criteria to allow approvals for first-time four-year transfers in all sports to compete immediately if they:
Receive a transfer release from their previous school.
Leave their previous school academically eligible.
Maintain their academic progress at the new school.
Leave under no disciplinary suspension.
The waiver criteria are the same as the legislated exception already allowed for student-athletes who compete in any sport other than baseball, basketball, football or men’s ice hockey.
There’s a lot of NCAA jargon in the release, and although there are no dumb questions, there are some likely ones to come out of this news. Let’s break down what it actually means.
1. What does a “transfer release” mean?
It means that the school a player is leaving has to sign off on their ability to play immediately somewhere else. This is actually part of the existing one-time exception (used by all NCAA-sponsored sports that aren’t football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s ice hockey and baseball). A school can’t block someone from transferring, but it can block that person’s attempt to get immediate eligibility. This particular piece of the puzzle is going to receive a lot of heat. The transfer portal was put in place so that players no longer had to ask their schools for permission to have contact with other schools about a transfer. Too many coaches and administrations were blocking their players from talking to potential transfer destinations. This is a similar issue, and it could become polarizing in the coming weeks and months for that reason.
The thinking behind requiring the receipt of a “transfer release” as part of this process is that it might be useful for egregious cases of tampering — for example, if School B coaches were to camp out in front of School A football player’s dorm room, School A might want the ability to block that player from getting to use the one-time transfer exception to play right away for School B. Officials would likely need documentation to prove tampering like that, were it to happen, but they’d have recourse.
Individual conferences will also likely need to set intraconference transfer policies. For example, could a UNC women’s basketball player transfer and play right away at Wake Forest as long as she’s in good academic standing? Those are questions that will need to be answered.
2. Why would smaller schools and smaller conferences support this? Aren’t their players the ones who are going to get poached?
Let’s get this out of the way first: Tampering is already happening across college sports right now. Bigger programs are poaching players from smaller schools right now, too. Power 5 coaches have plucked top-tier mid-major talent in men’s basketball for a while now, for example, and it’d be naïve to think otherwise. But sure, it’s reasonable to express concern that it could get worse if all players got to transfer without penalty one time. Some administrators are rightfully worried that they’re grooming players to be poached later on by the big boys. But it seems highly unlikely that these issues would hold up overall reform now that it’s so far down the road at this point. So the question becomes: Will smaller conferences and their representatives support this rule change, broadly speaking?
“I think so,” America East commissioner Amy Huchthausen said by phone on Tuesday. “Everyone recognizes that something has to be done. We’re at a point where we’ve tried to tinker with transfer issues at the edges and press all these different levers, and it hasn’t changed anything. If anything, it’s gotten people more frustrated with the system. So, maybe we fundamentally need to change the premise behind a transfer waiver.”
It’s also worth noting that plenty of players transfer between Power 5 programs or even from Power 5 to Group of 5 or FCS schools. Those transfers tend not to get as much attention as a blue blood landing a stud mid-major graduate transfer. But the smaller programs benefit from this, too.
3. Why is this tied to waivers at all?
Because it’s important that the waiver process still exist, for extenuating circumstances. From the NCAA press release:
The group agrees that a waiver process will remain in place for student-athletes who have transferred previously or otherwise do not qualify for the one-time waiver guidelines. Group members think this waiver process should be limited to truly extenuating and unique circumstances that threaten a student-athlete’s health and safety (for example, if the student-athlete is a victim of physical/sexual assault) while recognizing the impact multiple transfers have on the likelihood that a student-athlete graduates.
This particular working group was initially formed to explore the waiver process. By keeping the existence of waivers and calling the expansion of the one-time transfer exception an extension of waiver issues, the working group allows itself the freedom to make changes in this space.
4. How soon could this actually happen?
Really soon! That’s the craziest part of all of this. The NCAA typically moves very slowly on all issues. But the transfer working group was smart to speed up the normal process by finding a kind of loophole. By keeping the waiver process itself (for “truly extenuating and unique circumstances,” like it’s supposed to be for), the working group can call this a “waiver criteria change,” which does not have to follow the regular legislative cycle.
Any changes still need to be approved by the full Division I Council, but this distinction speeds up the process immensely. The Council meets next in April, and the working group could theoretically have a specific proposal or recommendation to present by then. (The Council also meets in June.) According to Tuesday’s press release, the working group’s goal is “to have the new criteria approved for transfers in the 2020-21 academic year.” So, it would just need to be approved in either April or June for the new rules to take place by next season.
The NCAA has begun to reach out to commissioners and coaches associations, among other groups, to request feedback. The members of the working group are tasked with soliciting feedback as well, and they have notes from their in-person meeting last week that they are already distributing to colleagues. Those notes include the acknowledgement that concerns “that need to be addressed as this concept is further developed” include tampering and Academic Progress Rate implications. The impact on APR scores matters because athletes currently need to clear certain GPA hurdles when transferring out to avoid penalizing their previous school.
The notes also pushed back against a popular talking point in the transfer debate. They include the working group’s findings that “there is no academic data to support that serving an academic year in residence following transfer is academically beneficial to all student-athletes, regardless of sport,” highlighting the fact that existing academic eligibility requirements already require the athlete to be “making satisfactory progress toward graduation” at his or her new school. This is yet another point that could help convince those undecided on the issue to support the one-time transfer exception.