Coaches weigh in on potential new transfer rule
College athletics might be in for another monumental shift on the transfer front.
The ACC and Big 10 are presenting a proposition to the NCAA giving players in five sports—football, both men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and hockey—a free one-time transfer.
On the surface it seems great, but a few coaches at South Carolina fear it might lead to a true free agency market in college sports.
“You know, I think that we're probably heading that direction, but I think if a head coach leaves, I think that a player should have the ability to transfer,” Will Muschamp said. “I don't have any problem with that, but I would not be for just a one-time transfer. I've been in this league for 20 years. Tampering will be a nice word for what'll happen, so people will be recruiting them off your campus.”
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Right now if a player decides to transfer, he or she would have to wait a year to play unless they get a waiver from the NCAA to play.
The waiver process across almost all sports has been widely inefficient and arbitrary with the Gamecocks getting some help with waivers to play immediately (Nick Muse, Josh Belk) and some waivers denied (Destiny Littleton, Tea Cooper, Jamel Cook and Jair Bolden).
“It’s bittersweet. It’s bitter in that you’re going to have coaches who are recruiting your current roster and the ones who don’t have playing time or going through a bad week or bad day or bad game. You’re going to have coaches in their parents’ ears or their ears or on social media saying, ‘Look, you won’t have those days over here.’ Then you have players being able to move freely,” Dawn Staley said.
“With the current rate for how we’ve been handled with waivers to play right away, it hurt us. But now someone will get to reap the benefit of a change. I think players should get their freedom of movement but I don’t think we understand the totality of what it’s going to do and the integrity that can be compromised with this rule change. I’m indifferent. I want it for the players but I don’t want it for the profession.”
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With this proposed rule, there’s a legitimate fear for true free agency in college sports with good players bouncing around if they don’t like a specific situation or high-major coaches mining smaller schools’ rosters.
“Divorce is perfectly legal in this country and everyone still tries to get along in divorce. I don’t think we should have free agency. Can you imagine when I got hired here; we worked our tails off to sign Sindarius Thornwell,” Frank Martin said. “A year later, Kentucky loses their six first round picks. Sindarius turns around and transfers to Kentucky. Now he plays for Kentucky, comes back here and kicks our tail. I’m getting fired the following year. That’s what we’re getting to. We’re always worried about the guy that transfers. How about the team that’s left behind? Isn’t this about building people and learning how to co-exist?”
Martin continued to say he’s pro-transfer but wants to get rid of the subjective nature of the waivers and make the players sit out a year, which has been the rule for a wile.
“Am I saying they shouldn’t transfer? That’s not what I’m saying. But I’m not saying free agency is the answer either. I’m not for the waivers,” he said. “I’m on the board. I sit there and argue this until I’m blue in the face. I’m not for the waivers. It’s too subjective. I’m not for the waivers. I think we have to eliminate waivers. It’s my opinion. But I don’t know if free agency is the way to go, man.”
The counter argument to allowing players to play right away on a one-time transfer is coaches bounce around from job to job with no consequences.
In those cases, players would usually be granted eligibility right away, as they were after the Ole Miss and Missouri situations recently.
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“Coaches go from school to school and have the freedom to do that. At the end of the day I think players probably deserve that right if they’re not in the right situation. The crazy thing about baseball now is these kids have to make these decisions when they’re freshmen or sophomores in high school. To think four or five years down the road they’re in the perfect situation that they thought they’d be in four or five years ago when they were eighth or ninth graders, sometimes it doesn’t work out,” Mark Kingston said.
“Many times it doesn’t work out. I think allowing that freedom is probably a good thing. Now the difficulty is will there be tampering? Will there be people doing things that aren’t ethically right?” “It’s going to be a complicated issue to try and get a handle on. At the end of the day, if it’s the right thing to do for the student athletes it’s the right thing to do.”
