NCAA extends eligibility for many athletes whose seasons were cut short
An NCAA committee on Friday granted another year of eligibility to scores of college athletes whose seasons were abruptly cut short by concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.
The Division I Council Coordinator Committee announced its “leadership agreed that eligibility relief is appropriate for all Division I student-athletes who participated in spring sports,” a day after the NCAA cancelled all winter and spring championship athletic events.
The NCAA, according to reports, will also discuss whether to extend the measure to winter-sport athletes, who were nearing their post-season, if not already there.
Spring sports include baseball, golf, lacrosse, softball, tennis and outdoor track-and-field, among others. Those teams had only played a fraction of their seasons.
Winter sports include basketball, gymnastics, hockey, swimming and diving, wrestling and others. The post-seasons for those sports were schedule for the coming weeks and into next month.
The ramifications of this decision will be significant. Teams have scholarship limits and freshmen set to enrol next season. The logistical challenges could persist for years, because it’s not only seniors who would be given the eligibility relief.
“It’s a challenge,” Ryan Bamford, athletic director at U-mass, said Friday, speaking of the potential ramifications of an eligibility waiver before the NCAA’S decision was announced. “The concept, I think everybody agrees with. I haven’t gotten a lot of pushback on the concept, but the mechanics of it are really, really sticky.”
The Division I Council Coordination Committee’s statement said the details of eligibility relief “will be finalized at a later time.”
“Additional issues with NCAA rules must be addressed, and appropriate governance bodies will work through those in the coming days and weeks.”
The NCAA has yet to provide a statement regarding winter-sport athletes.
Some men’s basketball conference tournaments were cancelled after they had already begun — at halftime of one game in the Big East tournament and with players warming up on the court in the Big Ten tournament.
Leagues throughout the country and the world continued to make similar decisions to not hold events that garner large crowds, and that could put athletes and staffs at risk even without spectators present.
College coaches and administrators advocated on social media for eligibility relief in the aftermath of the NCAA’S mass cancellation.
“You only get four years, and if you take 25 per cent of it away, that’s a lot to these young people,” Bamford said. “At least to give them the opportunity, if they decide, if they have the option to come back and complete their eligibility either here or at whatever other institution they want to, I believe strongly they should have that opportunity.”
Heather Tarr, the University of Washington’s softball coach, tweeted Thursday evening: “I’ll be damned if (the team’s seniors) played their last softball game this past Sunday . ... This is not the end.”
Bamford said his focus was on granting an additional year of eligibility to the spring-sport athletes who “didn’t even have a chance to really fully compete.”
The winter-sport athletes, while their season ended in a disappointing way, had the chance to nearly reach the finish.
“I think it would be tough for basketball,” said Maryland women’s basketball coach Brenda Frese, who last week led the Terrapins to the Big Ten tournament title. “You’ve played the majority of your season, so I think that would probably be tough . ... Although I would take it.
“I’d take all four seniors to come back, no question.”