Boy, this is one steaming pile of horseshit:
The 2018 AFCA Convention officially closed down on Wednesday, and the last event on the docket was executive director Todd Berry’s press conference. After meeting with the AFCA’s Board of Directors, Berry outlined the organization’s legislative agenda ahead of the NCAA Convention next week in Indianapolis.
Here were the highlights.
– Coaches don’t want to see the transfer rules changed. There is a proposal out there to give athletes a one-time transfer exemption, where a player could go from an FBS school to another FBS school without sitting out a year. The AFCA is against this. “The school that you’re going to, that’s really important to you. It’s not just about football, this is about the university,” Berry said…
Put simply, coaches ability to leave a job and work immediately — and getting paid six, seven or even eight figures to do so — while unpaid athletes do not have the ability to do the same does not poll well externally. Here’s how Berry rebutted that argument later in the press conference.
“You’d like to think that student-athlete is coming to the university because he loves that university and he wants to get an education from there. Coaches, professors, librarians, they come not necessarily because they love the university, because they’re paying them. It’s their job. The other thing is: when coaches leave, they don’t get to leave for free. I leave and I go to XYZ school, generally I owe X million dollars back to the university I just left.”
That last paragraph in particular is a doozy. The only thing I can’t figure out is whether Berry truly believes what he’s saying there or if he’s simply that cynical. Well, that and I can’t figure out which of those is worse.
In any event, players, just remember these guys ain’t exactly in it for your best interests. Probably that’s a good reminder for fans as well.
Get The Picture 
I wish they’d just be honest and say that players leaving without notice harms the health of the program. Why can’t they just be honest about that? They don’t give a flying screw about the university (and frankly when you’re talking about a handful of students out of 30-35,000, why should they?–the university loses ten times that many every semester).
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would it hurt the teams or is it that the coaches would lose a little bit of control over the teams and be just slightly more accountable for their actions. UGA is still going to get their players regardless of the transfer rules..same with all the best recruiting teams. Transfers just provide liquidity in the player market.
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Back in early 1983 when Ole No. 34 accidentally lost his last year of eligibility and made bank off of you know who, there was a big brouhaha that something must be done. A shrewd commentator pointed out that Lute Olsen quit on Iowa and went to Arizona without a peep. I guess nothing has changed since then.
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although important, he lost me at librarians.
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The people in control of college sports are eventually going to wear out the passion of the fans with crap like this.
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Yeah, you’d like to believe that the kids are going there because they love that university and want an education from there. But you don’t, and the fact that you said that you’d like to believe it and not that you DO believe it speaks volumes.
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As specialized as football is now, why can’t these guys just major in “Football?” There are so many careers out there in this field, many of which provide salaries in the six figures and millions per year. Why is football knowledge treated different than an Art or Music degree?
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Just look up the work of Marcel Duchamp or John Cage and any number of scholarly theses on them. To my knowledge. “football” doesn’t have “scholarship.” The arts do, and practitioners in college are expected to be conversant with that scholarship.
I will say this, though…a major in sports and culture, more broadly speaking, is not a bad idea.
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How many librarians and professors have to pay a penalty to take another job? And how many players get the multi-year guarantees that the college coaches get? The hypocrisy is astounding. Truly the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.
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How many coaches actually pay a penalty to take another job? Because the new school is usually, if not always, paying that buyout fee either directly or through an increased salary package to cover the amount. So it’s an absolute load of horse manure in reality.
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Pretty much agree with the transfer rules remaining in place. Not saying a tweak is not needed, but “free agency” would be the chaos many have predicted. CFB is at an all-time high relative to almost every other sport you can name, a change like this would be several steps back, imo.
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Until the players are paid on the free market, it would be hard for me to understand why a billion dollar industry can prevent a player from transferring without penalty.
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They can transfer to many other schools, 1AA, JUCO, etc. The schools have a right to protect their “business model”. Don’t believe they cannot transfer, they are not being held hostage. But they should not be allowed to make the rules, the major schools have all the risk and should take steps to be able to run them. If you don’t like the way they operate, change your location. That is what I do, and I will be damned if I allow others to insist on setting the rules to satisfy their selfish demands, especially if I feel it threatens my family, or business
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The strong always fuck over the weak. It’s the way this shitty world works. What really surprises me is all those well paid guys can’t think up some better bullshit to defend the status quo. I guess it shows how indefensible their position is.
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Well, a couple of days ago, while licking our wounds, we lamented the fact that there would be no college football for nine months. If only we could stop the coaches bull shit for that same amount of time. 😦
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Good stuff right there!
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