Yahoo's Wetzel hits nail on head about NCAA transfer rules

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=dw-marve010308&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

I'm rooting for Marve to lawyer up on this. Someone needs to tell the University of Miami that legalized slavery ended in the 19th century in the United States.

 

Until someone proves to me that slaves were pussy magnets, got a free education and several other amenities, I will always think it's preposterous to compare college football players to slaves.

 

O.K., maybe comparing college football to slavery is a bit too much. I'll take that last sentence of my first post back.

Still, I'd like to see Marve try to nail the NCAA to the wall with this. If anything, it seems like an interference in interstate commerce, or something like that. If college football isn't a business, as Miami and the NCAA are going to argue, then they would have a tough time proving that Miami would be harmed (outside of actually playing on the field) by Marve going to another school.

 

Can't Marve just get his release and say fuck you and got to FSU? There's usually not any written agreement about where he's going is there?

 

What? NCAA coaches are power-hungry dictators?

In other news, day follows night.

 

Wisconsin's coach did the same thing with a kid who was from Minnesota and wanted to transfer to ... Minnesota. Wouldn't let him out of the scholarship; kid ends up walking on with the Gophers (had to sit out this year, of course).

 

I agree with the transfer rules to some extent. If you're an all conference guy on a team that hasn't been to a bowl and "you hear" a top 10 team in your conference would sure like to have you, why wouldn't you go. I don't have a problem with the loss of a year of eligibility, if a player wants to go to a different school closer to home or other non-football considerations, the year-off won't factor into their decision.

 

At least he was just blocked from transferring to another school. They usually treat you worse at Miami.

 

Ding, ding, ding.


I will say this, after reading the column. This line bugs me:

Unless Wetzel reads College Theatre Weekly, he can't possibly know if this is true. Just because it doesn't make headlines doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It's entirely possible that students from other departments who attempt to transfer are denied references or other audition/portfolio/etc. material they may need from pissy professors.

It's also possible that theatre students aren't transferring to schools with scholarship arms outstretched. If they were attending School A on full scholarship, it's unlikely they will have a full scholarship as a transfer student at School B. It's not an apt comparison to high-profile college athletics.

 

Hey so I have a question. Maybe someone in the know can help me out.

Say some well-off D-I athlete goes to Miami (for example) and is paying his own way and walks onto the team. He plays a year for the Hurricanes and then wakes up one day and realizes he's playing for the Hurricanes and decided to leave.

If this D-I athlete just transfers schools, with no intention of accepting a scholarship from anyone, could he walk on to, let's say Florida State, or would Miami have some right to refuse to allow his to transfer there? And if Miami couldn't, would he still have to wait out the year? I'm not entirely familiar with these transfer processes.

 

It would clean a lot of shit up if these transfer rules existed in HS, too.

 

See: Jeff George, who paid his own way at Illinois after leaving Purdue because anyone transferring from one Big Ten university to another can never earn a scholarship at their new school. Yes, he still had to sit out a year. Rules differ between conferences, though.

Here's a story on the Wisconsin-Minnesota situation mentioned above:
http://www.bigtennetwork.com/news/article.asp?LIST_ID=11&STORY_ID=3177041