It’s for their own good.

College coaches really aren’t digging the graduate transfer rules these days.

… Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski went as far as calling the rule a “farce.” And even coaches whose teams have benefited from such transfers would like to see changes.

“I think we’ve reached a point with the epidemic of transfers that it would probably make sense to have everybody sit out a year regardless of circumstances,” said Arizona State Coach Herb Sendek, whose second-leading scorer, Jermaine Marshall, left Penn State after graduating. “We really have a free agency market in the spring.”

The Division I Leadership Council was expected to discuss the rule at the NCAA convention two weeks ago but the matter was tabled. One potential change to the rule would be to grant transferring graduate students an extra year of eligibility and then force them to sit out a season before they use it.

Yeah, free agency sucks.  If you’re a coach, that is.

Except, as John Infante notes, graduates aren’t really free agents.

… Like all other transfers, graduate transfers need permission to contact another institution. If a coach denies permission to contact and it is upheld on appeal, the athlete cannot accept an athletic scholarship at a potential transfer destination.

But let’s say an athlete is both willing to transfer without being recruited by the next institution and is willing to walk-on. They still cannot play immediately without the support of their previous institution under either the graduate transfer exception or graduate transfer waiver.

So even with a graduate, if a coach wants to be a prick about transferring, there’s nothing the student-athlete can do about it.

Which begs a question Infante is more than willing to answer.

So when coaches say they want the NCAA to restrict graduate transfers to avoid “free agency”, they are forgetting or ignoring the tools the NCAA already gives them in the transfer process, even for graduate students. What they are in fact asking for is some combination of the following:

• For the NCAA to save them from having to make the unpopular decision to deny permission to contact or the release to play immediately; and/or
• For the NCAA to prevent School A from letting an athlete transfer to School B and play right away even though School A has no problem with it.

Sounds about right.  After all, when it comes to control, why leave anything to the amateurs?

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Not coming soon to a SEC Network outlet near you

The next time somebody whines in your presence about why college professors and administrators make less than football coaches, point them to this handy FAQ from the SEC Network:

20. Will there be academic programming?

There are no dedicated blocks of academic programming planned at the outset of the network, but there will be opportunities to promote the academic and research accomplishments and reputations of SEC institutions within the live event programming of the network.

C’mon.  I sat through some pretty riveting lectures in my day, let me tell you.  Of course, maybe that’s just me.

They could always cut the baby in half by creating a reality show that follows a few athletes around as they go to class and work with their tutors.  Call it “The Sausage Factory”.  No?

The NFL can’t win for losing.

Pity the poor oligarchs.  They’ve got a free developmental league in college football.  They got the player’s union to agree to a rookie salary cap so that nobody gets a really big deal until he reaches his second contract.

And now the law of unintended consequences has struck, much to their dismay.  (h/t Mandel)

That leads players—and the agents and buddies whispering into their ears—to the following thought: Get into the NFL as soon as possible to get that free agency clock started and get to that big money.

The result is that you’re getting more and more players leaving school early, many of whom aren’t ready. “The college programs are having a big problem,” said one prominent NFC general manager who spends a lot of time on the road scouting. “That means the NFL has a big problem. I can only speak for me, but I want guys who have skins on the wall. A lot of these guys don’t have them, and you’re having to project even more.”

Quick – to the waaambulance!

There’s a suggestion that more education about life in the NFL is on its way to college players, but that ain’t gonna fly because who wants to knock the very thing that tempts so much talent into playing college ball in the first place?

Nah, my money’s on a more elegant, yet simple solution – the end of underclassmen being eligible for the NFL draft.  Blame it on Obama and concussions, or something.  Do it for the kids is always a popular working thesis. Pay no attention to that bank account behind the curtain.