The announcement came during SEC Media Days where the motto “It just means more” took on new meaning.
“Surprised by that? Absolutely surprised by that,” Tennessee coach Josh Heupel said after Thursday’s initial hearing that the NCAA essentially just allowed athletes to cross an unlimited number of times. “I think it just adds to the craziness of the transfer portal.”
That was the first reaction to the NCAA’s announcement that the Division I Council had recommended lifting the ban on players who transfer multiple times. The NCAA Board of Governors is expected to confirm the recommendation on Aug. 3.
The news comes less than a year after the NCAA’s new relaxed rules for one-time transfers.
Fun fact: the world didn’t end. Athletes are more like students who are able to switch in their free time. And the coaches have adapted. During the next two years on a trial basis, programs will be able to sign an unlimited number of players during the signing period until they exceed the annual limit of 85 scholarship players.
It was all insight into the slow implementation of NCAA deregulation. Big Brother will deal with such things less, not more, in the future. But if coaches thought they had a problem with the one-time transfer rule, the climate just became the Wild, Wild West on steroids — with an asterisk.
Because of the academic requirements involved, it will be difficult to transfer more than once as a student. Incoming transfers must be guaranteed as financial assistance for a period of five years.
“It’s just openly recruiting your own players.”
“One transfer, maybe two, is probably quite feasible,” said a source involved in the council’s process. “Get into more transfers, it gets harder and harder.”
Graduate students are currently allowed to transfer by making the maximum number of transfers allowed without a waiver of two. The removal of the restrictions initially made the coaches dizzy. Yes, at least now it is possible for an athlete to play at four different schools in four different years.
“A kid can go as many times as he wants and not have to graduate? Wow,” Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher told CBS Sports. “It’s just open recruiting of your players [by other schools]. Anyone can recruit [them]. That’s what they do anyway with third parties, with agents. Agents come in and say, ‘I can get you a better deal here. .’ “
The law was both expected and surprised. Administrators who saw the NCAA’s crackdown on amateurism weren’t shocked. We are experiencing in real time the NCAA’s slow, inexorable movement toward a professional model. The latest example: CBS Sports reported Friday that the Big Ten won a request that players receive a share of media rights revenue.
“People need to understand that, yes, there can be a person who plays for four teams, four different years,” said Ohio professor and player rights advocate David Ridpath. “At the end of the day, that’s their right until the NCAA wants to sit down and collectively bargain limits with the athlete. There’s just no other way forward now.”
The NCAA’s transformation committee is expected to announce moves next month that would allow conferences and divisions to enact some of their own rules. There are already concerns that the Big Ten and SEC will monopolize college football’s money, power, influence and championships — at least.
After the introduction of the one-time transfer rule last year, coaches cried foul that free agency had begun. Players could transfer twice in their career, once as a student and once as a graduate. The NIL added to the confusion as several coaches said CBS Sports recruiters and existing players on the roster were looking for the best NIL offers.
“To say you can now transfer without penalty is going to be a disaster …,” said attorney Tom Mars, who has worked on several high-profile opt-out cases. “Being a strong leader for real college athletes, I didn’t expect it to go this far.”
The NCAA this week merely codified the landscape that has developed around the portal and one-time transfer rules. Those students who wanted to transfer multiple times only applied to the NCAA for an exemption citing extenuating circumstances. More often than not, the NCAA granted those waivers knowing it didn’t want to end up facing a lawsuit.
“Normally the second transfer would have been approved for that reason alone anyway,” Ridpath said. “It’s difficult to transfer twice to meet academic requirements, whether it’s institutional, conference or NCAA. But it’s still not impossible. It’s possible that a person could [transfer as many times as they want].”
Mars essentially created that climate four years ago when he took Ole Miss and NCAA lawyers to the cleaners to get permission to transfer Rebels quarterback Shea Patterson to Michigan.
In 2019, Mars announced that it had stopped accepting opt-out cases due to the overwhelming demand for them.
“The residency year rule should have been changed because the coaches were abusing it. They’re somewhat to blame,” Mars said. “But when historians look back on this, if the NCAA had dealt with the NIL when it needed to, they wouldn’t have been forced into a corner…
“Maybe this spells the end of the NCAA,” he added.
