This is interesting
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@jayballer54 That’s exactly what I’m saying. No one is forcing them to stay. That’s fantasy. Kids can leave anytime they want. The penalty for leaving is sitting out a year from playing. Interestingly, the athlete knows all of this ahead of time when he signs the LOI. He knows that coach could leave, retire, or get hit by a bus. It is odd how you are so concerned about that topic, but if your kid was signing an LOI, wouldn’t that be a discussion point?
What I find odd here, always have, is that folks want to treat the professional coach, the guy who has worked his way up to his position, just as one would treat a kid out of high school. What industry does that?
Of course, your reference the kids being forced to stay, and the emotions of whether he’s “happy.” Remember this, that kid is free to leave and go anywhere in America. Anywhere. The only limitation is that he can’t play basketball for two semesters. That’s it.
You also fail to acknowledge that the LOI is a contract, and the kids get benefits (compensation) from that contract well into the six figures in most cases. You also fail to realize that when folks are compensated, they can be subject to non-compete agreements in the real world that restrict their work in an entire industry, most of them are a year in duration, some a bit longer.
What many fail to recognize, and I think your summary fails in this regard as well, is that rules are there for a reason. To keep a competitive balance. To create a terrific product. To make money that supports colleges, scholarships, and facilities – the facilities built by, and all risk assumed by, the universities. Not the players. Without that, there is no scholarship for bouncing a basketball. We forget that. The players have no skin in the game. They just play the game.
Remember, more than anything, this is freedom of choice. Players do not have to take the deal that the NCAA/Colleges are offering. If the terms are so unfair, go get a student loan, work at Panera, and do whatever you choose.
Ah, but that’s not good enough. Always wanting to change the rules to accommodate the whiners and complainers.
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Transfers would flow both ways.
Think about it like this. If you’re Carlton Bragg coming off the freshman season that you had at KU, not playing much, struggling to find your footing, etc. and suddenly, there’s an opportunity to transfer to a lower profile school, wouldn’t you have to seriously think about that.
There would need to be some tampering rules in place - no contact from coaches or admin until after the Final Four is over, for instance - but other than that, I think it gives kids that haven’t gotten what they thought, whether at a low major, mid major or high major, a chance to hit the reset button after their freshman year.
The one other wrinkle I would add is that I would drop the early graduation transfer option. You get the one freebie. After that, you have to sit a year no matter what, even if you have graduated.
I think it gives the students the opportunity to control their own destiny (rather than the other way around). If a coach is recruiting over you, now you can just move on. That means the high major programs may lose bench depth year to year as guys like Andrew White and Brannen Greene transfer out, while low and mid majors see guys moving up to the Power 5. It gives each student athlete a chance to find the right fit for their talent and goals both on the court and off.
Scholarships are one year renewable contracts anyway. Unless they want to make them four years guaranteed, I think this is the best option.
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@HighEliteMajor Well here is a simple solution and your going to see this more and more as time goes on, we have seen some cases and I think if the current rule stays you will see ALOT more- -athletes will NOT sign a LOI and will be able to transfer, your going to see more and more of this plain and simple. - you wait and watch - this thing is starting to snowball and this is coming from Coaches - -Commissioners - -Athletic Directors times are changing , again if Coaches aren’t going to have to be held accountable to part of their recruiting spew to the athlete - then the athlete doesn’t need to be held accountable either.
If a Coach can abandoned ship for more money , then the athlete can do the same for another school, and NO my kids are way past the college era so sorry to say that doesn’t apply to my concerns in this, just don’t feel the need to punish a kid for transfer by having to sit - but another example where we are all entitled to our own opinions and that’s what I like about the site, we can agree to disagree. - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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The coach- student athlete comparison is a red herring that has no bearing on the subject. The coach is a professional employee with a contract with the university to do a job and if he leaves early there are usually financial penalties.
A university is and still should be the place where an individual goes to get a degree and not a stooping place with no intention of getting a degree…call me old fashioned.
Any one that has attended college knows that most schools if not all schools require that you complete at least half of your credit at the institution the will grant you the degree. If students start transferring yearly, there is very little chance that will earn enough credits at any one school to graduate and thus making a mockery of the “student” part. The rule is an attempt to pretend that college is about getting an education and by extension a degree first and not just a convenient paid pit stop on the way to pro sports. Any student is free to transfer as he or she sees fit and many do, but if you choose to sign a LOI and receive a scholarship, then you better be ready to follow the rules.
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@JayHawkFanToo “…if you choose to sign a LOI and receive a scholarship, then you better be ready to follow the rules.”
Well, if they change the rules that would still involve kids following the rules. Tying automatic permission to the coach leaving is just realistic. If you went to KU to study under a particular professor and he left, you would be free to transfer. Why should athletics be different?
Maybe limit it to 1 transfer per student during entire career, no transfer eligibility without a redshirt year if the transfer occurs more than six weeks after the Final 4, and eliminate the difference for graduate transfers. Protects both schools and students.
If you think students in sports should focus exclusively on their degree, you aren’t old fashioned. You are out of date, an antique, a relic, a dinosaur, a grumpy old fuddy duddy! Whoops, sorry, quoting my granddaughter in there…
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Instant gratification is rarely best. Travis Releford was instrumental to KUs success late in his career, but didn’t play much early. Russell Robinson would’ve bolted after one year and not been a national champ (nor would ku in 08) I’m not sure why people are afraid of commitment? If the coach leaves players are generally granted a release and if they haven’t made it to practice yet they are allowed to play on day one at the new school.
These young adults need to be responsible for upholding their end of the bargain. They are essentially getting paid $18 an hour for 40 hour weeks year round without actually putting in that much time. ($37500 scholarship/year)
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@mayjay The problem with changing rules is that the rules were set up to protect the product and to create better competition – to try to limit players changing schools on a whim or by the influence of other schools, etc. A kid signs at, say, Central Arkansas. Then blows up. Will he stay there? No way. He’s gone. The one year penalty seeks to dissuade that. To make it more difficult. That helps with the balance of competition to a reasonable degree. It has a distinct purpose. The open transfer then creates a free agency situation that will change the game inexorably. CBB will truly be on the path of destruction.
Is that what we want?
As a general thought, it is comical that the cause of the student-athlete is so trumpeted, as if they are so abused and unfairly treated. Some really need a primer in relativism.
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@justanotherfan BINGO! School only is committed for one year. Players should have the same commitment. I’m ok with the current rules on transferring as long as the school has to keep the same commitment by honoring a 4 year scholarship no matter what.
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Do not want.
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@Kcmatt7 Curious. Why should it be the same? Just for the sake of being the same? The players aren’t “equal” to the schools here.
Remember … and it is a big point that is overlooked … the schools have all of the infrastructure, facilities, the leagues, the NCAA, the branding, they set up the TV deals, they provide the forum for players to perform, and, of course, the free education. And their product is limited. Meaning only so many kids can play, and there are millions more that want to.
That tips the balance.
It works that way in all contract negotiations. Those with the leverage get the better deal. Players have zero leverage. If they don’t come, others will.
But here’s a huge reality – it is, right now. a great deal for the player. If it wasn’t, they wouldn’t come. Freedom of choice.
When we start talking fairness or equality, then it takes the discussion to an emotional discussion. It’s just like the silly $15 per hour minimum wage. Sounds nice. Makes everyone feel good. But makes absolutely no sense.
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So if a coach leaves, could all the players go with him to the new school?
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@Careful-you Not in my scenario. I think it would be fair to restrict that.
@HighEliteMajor Ironically this is an area where I think a free market (here, labor) is better, and you support restrictions to protect established economic actors (schools). Sports makes for upside down economic loyalties.
I cannot see how (a) anyone could assert we currently have competitive balance, since virtually all recruiting power is concentrated in about 20 schools, or (b) why letting students move unfettered (only once) will destroy college sports. It would just become a different calculus. I think it would increase overall competitiveness, giving a real boost to smaller schools, and force schools to treat both coaches and athletes better lest they lose their labor pool.
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Coaches do have penalties for leaving a school before their contract is up. They usually have a buyout clause they have to pay the school they are leaving. Occasionally coaches have clauses in their contract for specific schools, but coaches usually have to pay some percentage of their remaining contract to leave. This is why coaches get regular extensions for a long period of time or have a contract that rolls over year to year on how long it lasts. This is to reduce the temptation of a coach leaving.
Should a coach like Cuonzo Martin regularly make lateral coaching moves, they build a reputation as job hoppers and thus does hurt their recruiting. Don’t be shocked if the Porters are the only high profile recruits he lands or he is somewhere else in a few years because that’s now his reputation.
Coaches do have penalties for leaving schools, but they’re different types of penalties since they are paid employees under contract at their school.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 A “penalty” (that the new school pays) is not the same as being forced not to coach for a year. That is a slight deterrent at best. Students actually do get penalized if they transfer.
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This is a great discussion. It really is. There is a lot of meat on the bone on this one.
I’ll throw this out. Maybe someone will bite? What if a kid could transfer without penalty if the HC leaves or they move to another conference. Yet if they want to transfer in conference then they have to sit a year?
I guess where I’m at, is on College sports itself. Colleges make big money on basketball and Football. It’s mere pennies to give a kid a free education compared to the money they make. I would also I think a lot of these kids go to schools that would enhance their skills in hopes of signing a contract in the NBA. If a coach leaves and a new coach comes with a different system. Who does it hurt? The kid. He signed up for a system that would enhance his skill set, and now he’s in a system that may not. What’s a free education cost? Thousands? What does a kid lose by playing a system that doesn’t enhance his skill set? Millions?
Heh? It’s something to think about.
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@DoubleDD You reiterate a point I suggested about the kid choosing to play for a coach he wants to, but you extended it a bit to give suggestions of how a change could impact the kid due to changes in style of play, for example. Good point.
But it caused me to remember another point: these kids are not often the best evaluators of their own skills and aptitudes. I think they come to college full of delusions of coming into a program and immediately being top dog. Their heads are filled with all the whispers and promises of handlers and agents, and people like Carl Henry who undermine the coach’s authority by telling kids how to play and to forget what the goddam coach said.
We do have to be careful not to blindly empower the dreamy imaginations of 17-18 year olds who may not know what is in their own best interest, or who don’t understand that being challenged is the only way to exceed your initial limitations.
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I don’t think it is the kid’s fault in having a false, umm, illusion about themselves. Colleges go all out to get them to sign on the dotted line.
Also let’s not forget that NBA teams make a mockery in how on what talent is and what talent is not.
I don’t blame the kids. It’s all about potential. If they can expose their skill sets? It only helps them. Even if it’s for just a season. NBA money is big.
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mayjay said:
@Texas-Hawk-10 A “penalty” (that the new school pays) is not the same as being forced not to coach for a year. That is a slight deterrent at best. Students actually do get penalized if they transfer.
Really good point and using the line “slight deterrent at best” is the PG version of reality.
There really is no deterrent for coaches leaving a school because otherwise we wouldn’t see this coaching carousel that happens every single year in both Football and Basketball.
Money, big whoop, these coaches are often the highest paid state employee (Self) to coach kids how to win games! “Oh, I owe my former university a million dollars, take it out of my next million(s) dollar contract”. If Coaches had to sit a year from coaching you would see very little turnover from year to year. You’d also have a lot of angry fans, boosters etc that want the current regime gone. Can’t imagine that fits the model or pressure that these cash cow College’s are under to have the best product on the field.
The playing field isn’t fair, level, whatever we may call it. I’d like to know if there is another profession out there that mandates you take a year off from doing what you want to do just because the apple cart is scared of competitive balance (another misconception that doesn’t exist).
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There are already rules for transferring in-conference which normally ends up being a sit-out year. Some have found ways around it through the graduate transfer route recently, a few Big-10 players have done this (most notably Skip Albrecht from Michigan) and the most controversial one of them all being Cameron Johnson this spring who went from Pitt to UNC but not without months of appeals, media attention etc to get there. His situation was especially interesting considering he had multiple years of eligibility left at Pitt, graduated early and wanted a new situation. The moral of the story is, it can happen but the painful process of appeals and kickback from schools becomes difficult to stick with. They don’t get what they want without paying the price emotionally.
There have also been cases where if a coach leaves or an investigation/scandal rocks the school (such as Baylor or Penn St) those kids usually get free reign from the NCAA.
Normally when a coaching change occurs kids are given their release from the LOI without a lot of resistance but the sit-out year still applies to them. That is where this system is the most unfair. Both the coach and player sign contracts which we’ve established. I can’t think of one coach who’s left a school for another and couldn’t afford to payback his former employer (if that was the case Counzo Martin would be broke @Texas-Hawk-10).
The one thing I don’t have an answer for is the academic side. If a kid transfers to a new school what are the chances his credits go with him to this new school? What are the chances he can graduate in 4 years? Is this an achievable goal for everyone, not just a %. Honestly that probably is the biggest reason the rule will likely never change. I don’t know if the sit-out year is competitive balance or just kids need the year to catch up academically and adjust to whatever academic structure is in place there. Whether the academic side and the athletic side are two different entities, at the heart of this the kid is a student first, athlete second.
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@DoubleDD I meant that the kids may have a very limited view of their skill sets, not through a fault of their own but because what they have done before college, and what they are told before college, are limited.
A good and demanding coach can get more out of them because that type of coach can see things the kid can do that the kid hasn’t shown before.
But bringing it out can be uncomfortable. And I only blame kids when they decide to listen to handlers or parents looking to cash in on talent rather than developing it.
I still think kids should have the option of deciding. America, my dad said, is the place where any damned fool is free to make mistakes.
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mayjay said:
. America, my dad said, is the place where any damned fool is free to make mistakes. Wise man, your Dad.
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I can’t imagine the recruiting headaches Bill would have and the stress us fans would go through every year. It’d be like when the Morri left every stinking year.
I do think coaches should be made to honor their contracts. A 5 year deal means no coaching elsewhere for 5 years unless the school terminates the contract. Then your left paying Weis for years…
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@Hawk8086 Another bit of wisdom came when I objected to his characterization of a person he had a political argument with:
Me: Dad, I thought in America you are free to believe what you want. You can’t call someone a jerk just 'cause they disagree with you!
Dad: No, that is what America is all about. The freedom to call someone a “jerk” who is a goddamned jerk!
I learned a lot about freedom–and jerks, come to think about it–from Dad.
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I almost always support any move that gives more options to the student-athletes.
However, in this case, I can see it more like @HighEliteMajor …
Imagine we are playing Shaka and Texas… Shaka likes one of our players and basically “recruits” him away from us? It seems like players would move around too much, often because they are given “incentives” for doing so.
@HighEliteMajor called it right… free agency.
College ball isn’t pro ball. The more we make it look like pro ball, the more we will have to deal with “side effects” like players being paid under the table to flip teams.
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We worry about side effects, but isn’t that already happening? There’s already illegal contact, impermissible benefits, etc. A lot of this happens because everyone knows that once a kid picks a school and goes there, its really hard for them to go somewhere else.
We are only looking at it from a money sport perspective, but this actually has larger benefits for the non-revenue sports, where a lot of the coaching changes and such fly under the radar. Those students deserve some flexibility if they are unhappy with their situation, too. As a student, even if you are on scholarship academically, you can leave one school and go to another with no penalty. For most academic competitions at the collegiate level, that also applies. Debaters don’t have to sit for a year if/when they transfer as far as I can tell. This only applies to athletes, yet everyone wants to act as if they are “students first.”
Let’s just cut to the chase. They make money for the university and the NCAA, so its easier to make sure that money keeps flowing if you put rules in place to restrict the free labor. And since the people making the money are making the rules (rather than the people that are providing the effort) of course the strictest rules apply to the labor.
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@HighEliteMajor I totally agree with your freedom of choice point.
Which is why I am against players getting paid to play. They do get paid, many of them just don’t like what form the currency comes in.
But, can I ask, what is the point of not letting players transfer like any other student? If someone else wants them to play a sport, what is the benefit of not letting a student transfer? Allowing a free market to dictate itself instead of trying to hold players hostage.
It didn’t work for Northwestern, but if an entire league could get their players to unionize and strike, it would be an entirely different ball game. People’s response would be to charge those students the tuition and revoke their scholarship. Fine. Do it. Good luck with TV deals. You won’t be Nationally televised for 4 years. You won’t win a bowl game or an NCAA Tournament game for 4 years. You are screwed. The league would literally go bankrupt.
Which is why the players as a whole have so much more leverage than the NCAA. Which is why players get what they want. Especially after they won the video game law suit. It is why they now get a “stipend” and get more food than the average student. When players cause any public outrage, they win.
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@drgnslayr You could prohibit in-conference transfers or make them the only ones with a redshirt year. You could also prohibit more than 1 player per year from going to a single school. Creative minds can find ways of dealing with poaching.
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Only one transfer allowed? If that’s the case I’d only want Bill to recruit known talents and oads. By known talents I mean college players on other teams. F it embrace transfer U. It weakens the competition while strengthening your team. Plus Bill could kick any bums out and make it look like he transferred of his own accord.
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BeddieKU23 said: There have also been cases where if a coach leaves or an investigation/scandal rocks the school (such as Baylor or Penn St) those kids usually get free reign from the NCAA.
Yet isn’t that for new recruits coming in, and not for kids that are already in the program?
I don’t know the answer? That’s why I’m asking.
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@dylans Well, I didn’t say it was perfected yet!
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DoubleDD said:
BeddieKU23 said: There have also been cases where if a coach leaves or an investigation/scandal rocks the school (such as Baylor or Penn St) those kids usually get free reign from the NCAA.
Yet isn’t that for new recruits coming in, and not for kids that are already in the program?
I don’t know the answer? That’s why I’m asking.
Surprisingly a low number of players already on the teams decided to leave from both situations. I think Penn St had 15 guys leave and the NCAA permitted that schools could use 2013 scholarships for those guys. Baylor, I didn’t see much on current players that left, all the news out there was about incoming recruits who left. Good point
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@BeddieKU23 With Baylor lately, the surprising thing is that more of their football team wasn’t transferred–in paddy wagons.
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mayjay said:
@BeddieKU23 With Baylor lately, the surprising thing is that more of their football team wasn’t transferred–in paddy wagons.
Thanks for the friday morning laugh
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mayjay said:
@drgnslayr You could prohibit in-conference transfers or make them the only ones with a redshirt year. You could also prohibit more than 1 player per year from going to a single school. Creative minds can find ways of dealing with poaching.
Sounds way too confusing for me… in the perspective of the legal aspects. Sounds like opening a legal can of worms that will be stuck a long time in federal court.
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Each school could, at the beginning of the academic year, list out a set of schools (limited in number - maybe 5-10) that players could not transfer to without having to sit out a year. That would be part of the scholarship “contract” for that year. When you renew the following year, same thing. This way student athletes know going into the academic year what places they can or can’t transfer to, schools have some say over things and everything is laid out prior to the start of the year. Student athlete signs, everything is settled. If the student decides to transfer, they already know what the restrictions are and can pick from a broad range of remaining schools.
For example, KU could always list K-State and Mizzou. Duke and UNC could always list each other, etc.
By limiting the number, schools would have to be specific about the restrictions, rather than setting really broad restrictions that offer no choice at all.
