Drew Kerekes

Imagine a world where there was no penalty from transferring to one Division I school to another. Players who wanted to do so would be immediately eligible to play without having to sit out a year.

There is currently such a proposal being considered by the NCAA. According to a story by 247Sports’ Andrew Slater, the NCAA may vote to allow all Division-I first-time transfers to be immediately eligible to play upon transferring to a new school, assuming the student-athlete meets certain academic requirements. Previously, any undergrad transfers either had to go the junior college route if they wanted to play immediately before jumping to another Division-I school, or be forced to sit a year if you transferred to another Division-I team.

Graduate transfers have a bit of wiggle room in this area: If you earn a bachelor’s degree at your current school and wish to enroll in graduate school and play for a different team, you can become immediately eligible if you still have one year of eligibility remaining. (Athletes get five years to play four, with a redshirt year as an option, so if they were redshirted one year and played for three, they could transfer as a graduate and play their fourth year.)

Of course, there are a lot of opinions on this rule as it pertains to colleges. I spoke to a couple of local high school coaches to get their opinions on a similar, hypothetical bill being considered by the MHSAA that did away with “bonafide moves” and allowed athletes to transfer from one member school to another without penalty. (This is not actually being considered, mind you.) Meridian football coach Calvin Hampton described what would happen — and it sounds similar to what could happen in college athletics if the proposed comes to pass.

“You’d see some kids from top-level programs that can’t compete in their programs drop down a level,” Hampton said. “At the same time, a couple of kids playing at lower-level schools would want to play at higher-level schools.”

Northeast Lauderdale coach Curt Blackburn isn’t too fond of my hypothetical, saying the better Mississippi teams would use it to poach the best players from other schools.

“I wouldn’t care for it,” Blackburn said. “It would create a bunch of powerhouses and would basically separate the haves from the have nots.”

At least a few college coaches are bearish on the idea for their sport as well. Take Indiana men’s basketball coach Archie Miller, who talked to Scout.com’s Evan Daniels: “It would turn into one of the dirtiest recruiting periods that you’ve ever seen.

“You’ll have guys talking to your players when they are in your gym,” Miller continued. “Coaches will recruit players right after games and now you can go directly to the source, it would cripple teams and programs.”

Alabama football coach Nick Saban in one of his scheduled press conferences this past week seemed wary of what a hypothetical rule could do to teams’ roster constructions.

“How can you sort of plan a roster or your recruiting or your team if everybody’s a free agent at the end of every season?” Saban questioned. “And every player that doesn’t have things go the way he wants them to go all of a sudden says, ‘Well, I’ll just go over here and play over here.’”

Basketball, I think, would be the hardest hit by this rule. Opponents would point out how, were this rule in place, a player who blossomed at a mid-major could get “recruited” by a bigger school that had a roster need. This could potentially hurt the non-Power 5 teams that already tend to benefit from the graduate transfer rule.

Watching the effects of this potential rule on football would be interesting. How would a program like Alabama fare, for example, if not every five-star athlete saw playing time as a freshman, and there was an exodus of more than a few players who didn’t get the instant playing time they desired? Or, for that matter, how would a program like Alabama benefit if a player like former Vanderbilt linebacker Zach Cunningham, who grew up in Pinson, Ala., and currently plays for the Texans, was contacted by Alabama after it became clear he was good enough to start for the Crimson Tide?

We can also play the hypothetical game with Ole Miss: Pretend this rule was already in place when all of this NCAA stuff really started coming out. Then pretend an SEC team that recruited quarterback Shea Patterson out of IMG decides to contact Patterson right after Hugh Freeze is let go by the school. “Hey, Shea, you just lost your coach, and your school could go on NCAA probation. Why don’t you transfer to us and be eligible right away and have actual postseason aspirations?”

I know what the counterargument to this is: It’s in the best interest of the student-athlete, who shouldn’t be beholden to a school for four years just because he or she signs a scholarship. Say a coach leaves in a year for another school — shouldn’t that player have the option to transfer without penalty? What if a sickness in the family makes the player want to move closer to home? Or what if we just don’t want to treat student-athletes differently than other students by penalizing them for switching schools?

It’s an argument I understand, but still one of which I’m skeptical. Both Saban and Miller’s points raise legitimate issues with how out-of-control recruiting other players might get and how difficult it would be to run a team if you risk a key player deciding to transfer out of the blue. Asked about a similar hypothetical in the high school ranks, Hampton and Blackburn both outlined what would likely happen — and it has interesting parallels to what would likely happen in the college game with the same transfer freedom.

It’s an issue that deserves discussion, but I’m not convinced it’s an issue that should have a black-and-white, let-them-transfer-and-play-immediately blanket policy. Nuance, such as granting transfer eligibility for any player whose coach leaves at the end of the season, could be a compromise. I’d rather not have true free agency in college athletics. 

Drew Kerekes is the sports editor at The Meridian Star. He can be reached at dkerekes@themeridianstar.com.