Speaking of watching a master at work, here’s John Feinstein doing a wonderful job with this “sure, in a perfect world, a one-time transfer waiver for college athletes would be fair, but coaches” take.
Just as good as Feinstein is the “doing it for the kids” rationale from the usual suspects.
“I would be 100 percent for the rule if I was selfish and greedy,” Tennessee men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes said Saturday. “It won’t change the number of kids I lose to transfer, but it will change how many kids transfer from mid-majors because power schools will poach their players nonstop. It already goes on because of graduate transfers and all the waivers that are allowed, but if you make every single transfer easy, it will happen all the time.”
Michigan State’s Tom Izzo took his objection a step further. “On the surface, it sounds like this is what’s best for the kids, but it’s really not,” he said. “If I lose a good player, sure, it might hurt me for a little while, but long term, I’ll be fine. The power school coaches in football and basketball will be fine. They’ll go out and recruit someone else.
“But what happens to the kid? What happens when he finds out the grass isn’t greener somewhere else? What happens when it turns out all those people telling him he was going to be an NBA player are wrong, and he wakes up one morning without a college degree and no idea what he’s going to do with his life next? I’m not saying there aren’t kids who should transfer; I’m saying they should think about it before they make that leap.”
Clearly, this is a decision that shouldn’t be rushed into, but only arrived at after a lot more soul searching by coaches. Maybe all the job hopping they do is simply research into whether that grass really is greener.
They’ll get back to you, kids. It’s for your own good.