“There are a lot of waivers granted. I have not monitored the percentage.”

Greg Sankey on the transfer portal is the perfect mix of non-committal weasel…

“What I’m concerned about is that we’re, like, seeking reasons,” he said. “Whether there’s a transfer rule or not, we all should know the same information to be able to make decisions.”

Sankey said he has heard coaches wonder, “Are we doing the right thing?” but indicate they will be active participants in the system. He wants to wait to see hard data on how many players are graduating and remaining eligible before reaching his own conclusion.

… and bullshit artist.

“We assume the movement, the freedom, is healthy,” Sankey said. “I think we need to track the data to see when young people move from Campus A to Campus B for whatever reason, are we assessing the right educational outcomes?”

Yeah, sure.  Because if there’s one thing the SEC is synonymous with, it’s right educational outcomes.

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Butthurt Junior is the best Junior.

Lane Kiffin on the NCAA transfer portal:

"We're in a generation of just wanting attention no matter what — so now, I can go in this portal, get an article written about me, and get re-recruited because I don't like exactly how something's going.” pic.twitter.com/iIWobSSxYT

— CFB Home (@CFBHome) April 19, 2019

Imagine the Laner getting his panties in a wad over somebody wanting attention.

“It’s definitely a win in our books.”

In a shocking development, the NCAA Division I Council actually passed something sensible.  Two things, actually:

College athletes who have enrolled in summer school and received athletics financial aid can transfer and play immediately without a waiver if their head coach departs before the first day of classes for the fall term. Additionally, walk-on student-athletes on teams that provide athletics aid and nonrecruited walk-ons can transfer and play immediately without a waiver. Those rules are effective for students who transfer to new schools this fall.

Good job, folks.

Oh, and this happened, too.

The Council also defeated a proposal that would have required schools to count financial aid for some postgraduate transfers against team limits for two years, regardless of whether the student remained enrolled after exhausting athletics eligibility. The proposal would have applied only to student-athletes competing in football and basketball.

I bet those lower division coaches are pissed right now.

“That has not always proven to be best for kids.”

Kirbs, at his disingenuous best:

Speaking on Sirius XM Radio Thursday, Smart did not hold back on his opinion of the transfer portal, which has seemingly created a new landscape in college football.

“I don’t know that it is right for college football,” Smart said. “It may be good on an individual basis. But when you give kids an easy way out sometimes, sometimes they take the path of least resistance. People can say ‘well, coach, you are free to go wherever you want to go,’ we also have a contract and they are free to fire us anytime they want. So they can fire us anytime they want as an assistant coach.”

You can deny renewing a scholarship to a kid, or simply letting him know he’s buried on the depth chart forever, anytime you want.  At least your contract has a buyout provision.  That student-athlete being tossed aside doesn’t even have that much.

“For a student-athlete, to say they should be able to go anywhere, I really believe if the kid graduates now, he should be able to go anywhere he wants to go,” Smart said. “I am even okay if the kid has been there three years because that probably means he has been there long enough realize I can or cannot play.

“But giving kids a way out when early on it’s tough, and the process is hard, that’s the biggest problem I have.”

Yeah, Smart at least is copacetic with graduate transfers (although you can cynically argue that’s because he’s been the beneficiary of those), so he’s not as rigid as others I could name.  But to pretend transfers are generally wrong because as a coach you know better than the kid does about what’s best for him despite the obvious conflict of interest is just another way of saying “best interest of the kid” = coach’s control.

Let’s remember what “giving kids a way out” means here.  If a student-athlete wants to leave a program, ultimately there’s nothing Smart or any other coach can do to prevent that.  All that’s being debated here is how much information should be available to a potential transferee about places that would take him in and whether he should be immediately eligible for financial assistance if he moves.  If you’re a coach objecting to that, well, there’s your real hard process.

Today, in “free agency”

So, Dennis Dodd is reporting that Proposal 2018-106, which would require any program accepting a graduate transfer in football, men’s basketball or women’s basketball to commit to a scholarship for two years rather than one, is meeting some resistance.

Color me surprised.  After all, how could anyone object to its noble concerns?

“This [proposal] has been in the works for a while,” said Gregg Clifton, a Phoenix-based attorney. “The concern, frankly, is you’re seeing kids not doing it for the right reason. They’re not doing anything to pursue a degree…”

Pay no attention to those one-and-done youngsters dribbling over there.

This is a joke, of course.  The concern isn’t over academics.  It’s the mid-majors pissed off by bigger programs raiding their kids that are driving this.  I don’t know who wins this fight ultimately, but you can bet that whoever emerges victorious will label it a big win for student-athletes.

Just because they entered the transfer portal doesn’t mean they’re ready.

I’ve already mentioned Justin Fields’ less than stellar spring game outing Saturday.  It looks like the kid he inspired to jump to Miami had an even worse day.

It was a rough public debut for Tate Martell. His first pass was a wobbler for Miami’s first three-and-out of the game. His first series against the Hurricanes’ first-team defense ended with an interception by defensive back DJ Ivey, when the quarterback threw into heavy traffic. One fan tried to start an “Overrated” chant for the highly touted transfer from the Ohio State Buckeyes, but no one followed,

Even in the second half when Miami let Martell run its second-team offense against the third-team defense, the redshirt junior struggled to move the ball. On his first drive of the third quarter, Martell began with a throw behind a receiver, tripped while going back for a play-action pass, then threw a third-down pass about 10 yards short of his target. Maybe the ball was tipped on a couple of those wobbly throws, but that’s an issue, too, for the 5-foot-11 quarterback.

Has anybody given serious thought to the idea that maybe programs aren’t sending their best and brightest through the portal?  Who knows, maybe this is a self-solving problem if coaches are a little more patient.

“Who’s seriously there for the master’s?”

A reminder that the NCAA is all about heppin’ the kids:

In two weeks, the N.C.A.A.’s primary legislative body, the Division I Council, will vote on a measure that could severely restrict graduate transfers. The proposed rule change would require that colleges accepting graduate transfers be docked a scholarship the next year if the transfer does not earn his secondary degree within a year.

So as graduate transfers have continued to increase — there were 124 this season in men’s basketball, according to the website GradTransferTracker, including a handful who were key contributors on N.C.A.A. tournament teams — and as programs have found value in them as a quick fix that suits both team and player, the new rule is seeking to discourage them by effectively adding a tax on programs that accept such players.

“That’s really draconian,” Rodney Fort, a sports economist and professor of sports management at the University of Michigan, said of the rule change. “This is like losing a scholarship from an N.C.A.A. penalty.”

… Justin Sell, the athletic director at South Dakota State who led the Division I transfer working group that developed the proposal, said that too often graduate transfers in men’s basketball and football had little interest in obtaining graduate degrees.

“We really want to protect against the football player who is done and leaves in December and the basketball player who is done and leaves in March,” Sell said. “A lot of students are looking to use it to play another year. Who’s seriously there for the master’s?”

Yeah, if there’s one thing schools are concerned about, it’s sham decisions.  What I love about Sell’s reasoning is the way he conveniently pretends the players are operating in a vacuum here, as if the coaches who take in these kids are mere accidental bystanders as they’re looking to play another year.  It takes two to tango, last time I checked.

But if you really want to gauge the hypocrisy of this, you don’t have to look very far.  For one thing, the new rule only applies to three sports, football, women’s basketball and men’s basketball.  Gee, what a funny coincidence.  Second, they know it’s bullshit.

Sell conceded objections about practicality (many graduate programs take two years to complete) and fairness (the rule does not apply to athletes who compete as graduate students without transferring) were fair, but said his group’s intent was to “manage behavior.”  [Emphasis added.]

“When you’re trying to manage behavior and put together policies and rules in trying to create ethical behavior and integrity, there are challenges to that,” Sell said. “It’s really hard to police integrity.”

To put that highlighted point another way,

I was interviewed for the story below, but didn't make the cut. I explained that this can't be about education b/c otherwise the rule would also punish schools where the athlete stays for grad school but doesn't finish, rather it's about lowering intra-cartel competition. (1/x) https://t.co/byjYOAaZDj

— Andy Schwarz (@andyhre) April 4, 2019

If managing behavior is the major concern here, then why isn’t the rule going to be applied to all graduate student-athletes, not just those who seek to transfer?

I think we all know the answer to that.

I also explained that if a losing a scholarship slot is seen as a penalty, even though school won't actually have to pay out an actual scholarship, then we know a year of an athletes' services, even the 13th guy on an MBB team, is more valuable than the scholarship's cost.

— Andy Schwarz (@andyhre) April 4, 2019

It’s all about the control, baby.  That’s how you get to the faux concern of Jim Harbaugh.

However, Harbaugh does have one tweak he’d like to see — not even to the rulebook. Instead, he’d like to see one particular rule applied uniformly.

Last season, the NCAA changed the redshirt rule, making it so players could play in any four games and still retain that season as a redshirt year — meaning, they would retain a year of eligibility, regardless of having seen playing time. That new rule went into effect this past season, but only for players who utilized said rule.

Harbaugh would like to see that apply in arrears, so that any player who’s currently enrolled would have that same rule applied if they played in four or less games, but before the new rule went into effect.

“The other thing, though, I would say, because it can affect a lot of players – the new rule of being able to play in four games and still being able to have a redshirt, there should be a retroactive for those players that are juniors, seniors and possible fifth-years,” Harbaugh said. “Because right now, I believe there’s a hard-line on them, even though you have a new rule. If a player only played in one game or two games or played near the end of the season, but now they’re a junior or a senior, that year shouldn’t be, they should be under the same eligibility. It should be grandfathered in like those that played this past season. Hopefully, people come to the logic of that.”

That’s really considerate, Jim.  It’s nice to see that some coaches can selflessly support players… eh, what’s that?

That would give players such as Shea Patterson, who lost a year of eligibility having played in Ole Miss’ final three regular season games in 2016, a redshirt year, and an ability to come back for another season, if he so chose.

Oh.

In the context of college athletics, integrity doesn’t mean what I think it means.