I don’t know about you, but I find that there are few things in life more comforting than Mark Emmert’s assurance. Take, for example, the sticky issue of player transfers. Emmert wants you to know that he’s on the mother. Totally.
“The issue of transfer rules, whether it’s for undergraduates or graduates, is one of the most hotly debated and discussed, I think, in sport right now, whether it’s football or basketball,” Emmert said during his Final Four news conference this week. “The challenge is it’s really hard to figure out a right way to resolve this issue.”
Well, at least he seems familiar with the concept. So why the struggle? How hard can it be to balance this attitude…
“We have such a massive number of kids that transfer nowadays because of everybody wanting instant gratification,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said Friday. “Coaches in some way have been blamed for that. We have absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s the want and need of instant gratification. The culture we have, if things don’t work out, just leave and go somewhere else.”
… with this one?
Villanova coach Jay Wright and Oklahoma’s Lon Kruger said they don’t have any set policies regarding transfers, taking them on a case-by-case basis. Wright said he was not ready to say whether standardized NCAA rules regarding transfer limitations would be the right fit, but added “players do have the right to choose where they want to play, just like we all as coaches have the right to go where we want to coach.”
Yeah, that “fine for me, but not for thee” approach can be a bitch sometimes. Lucky for Mark there’s a judge out there willing to clear up things.