Opinions vary on transfer rules
athletics the past several years. A relatively new phenomenon now comes with even newer questions about how graduate transfers should be treated and how their movement should be governed.
It’s a topic for which Johnson has almost unwittingly become a poster child.
“To me, it’s completely unfair,” said David Ridpath, an associate professor of sports administration at Ohio University and the president of the Drake Group, a nonprofit organization focused on defending academic integrity in higher education from commercialized aspects of college sports. “It’s the antithesis of what education is supposed to be about. It’s absolutely unfair. I don’t see this lasting.”
• Limitations on graduate transfers come at a time in which the number of them have increased significantly. Due to a litany of factors, including the opportunity to earn credit hours over the summer and getting the financial aid to do so, Division I athletes are graduating at a faster rate, as the NCAA’s graduation success rate in 2016 reached its highest point since the organization began tracking it. With a degree in hand and competitive eligibility remaining, some have turned to a rule that allows them to continue playing if they enroll in a graduate or second degree program. Under those same guidelines, they can transfer to another school without having to redshirt a season, as a traditional transfer does.
It’s an arrangement that has been beneficial both to players and the programs to which they flock. Not surprisingly, the popularity has grown. In 2011, according to an NCAA study, there were 15 Division I graduate transfers in men’s basketball and 17 in football. By 2015, those numbers jumped to 68 and 108, respectively. Last year, according to a list compiled by ESPN, there were 108 graduate transfers in Division I men’s basketball alone.
With no NCAA rule in place prohibiting the restriction of graduate transfer destinations, beyond permission-to-contact mandates, conferences and schools have enacted their own measures. From there, legislation varies.
The ACC exempts those with baccalaureate degrees from its intra-conference transfer rules, which require players not only to sit out a year, but lose a year of competitive eligibility. The Big Ten and Pac-12 have the same stipulations as the ACC, only without a graduate transfer exemption. Big 12 graduate transfers can move within the conference without penalty as long as they meet NCAA requirements. In the Big East, transferring within the conference in men’s and women’s basketball is forbidden, even for athletes who have graduated.
Beyond a conference’s guidelines, individual institutions can implement their own rules, a designation that has led Pitt and Johnson into their present stalemate. Pitt’s policy — which was applied to Johnson and Rozelle Nix, a 6-foot-11 center who transferred to South Alabama in May — was crafted by members of the athletic department, the faculty athletic representative and the office of general counsel and is subject to periodic audits from the university and the ACC.
In the broader landscape of college athletics, Pitt’s stance isn’t necessarily unique. When asked about restrictions for graduate transfers, five ACC schools said they handle them on a case-by-case basis, three said they outlaw future opponents and one said it implements no restrictions. One university declined to comment and four did not respond to an email.
The athletic department’s policy has, however, drawn its share of critics over the past week, many of whom argue an athlete should be rewarded for graduating and should not have their future opportunities restrained by a school to whom they’ve already fulfilled their obligation.
“Cam Johnson has graduated, and he wants to leave,” said ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas, who drew significant attention to Johnson’s situation after tweeting about it Sunday to his 1.7 million Twitter followers. “The school puts a restriction on him saying ‘OK, he can’t go anywhere within the league or anybody on our schedule.’ Why? ‘Well, because we feel like it and we feel like it because we don’t want to play against you. You have our trade secrets, you know how our program works’ and all this nonsense. It’s total nonsense.
“Think of it this way — Cam Johnson could quit playing basketball and accept a job on North Carolina’s staff and reveal all of Pitt’s magnificent basketball secrets and could write a book about Pitt’s program and reveal all of Pitt’s secrets. It’s absurd to the point of being laughable. It’s petty and it’s vindictive.”
Pitt, through an athletic department spokesperson, declined comment beyond an earlier statement it had released on Johnson.
“We have remained consistent with our athletic department policy, within NCAA legislation, stipulating student-athletes are restricted from transferring to institutions within the Atlantic Coast Conference and those on our schedule next season,” the statement reads. “Cameron Johnson and his father were informed of our policy, as well as the appeals process when they elected to seek transfer. They went through our transfer appeals process and were granted permission to contact an ACC school. However, the committee upheld the policy to limit immediate eligibility within the conference. If Cameron were to transfer within the ACC, he would be eligible to receive financial aid immediately but would have to sit out a year of competition due to standard NCAA transfer regulations.”
Though intra-conference graduate transfers are rare, they’re not unprecedented.
Adam Smith, who averaged 13.4 points per game as a fourth-year junior at Virginia Tech, transferred to Georgia Tech as a graduate student in 2015. In consecutive years, with Max Bielfeldt in 2015 and Spike Albrecht in 2016, Michigan saw two of its players move within the Big Ten as graduate transfers, with the former going to Indiana and the latter to Purdue. In both cases, Wolverines coach John Beilein limited the player’s options before pressure from the athletic director and general public — as well as, in Bielfeldt’s case, a decision from a school review board — forced him to reverse course.
“Any time you have to play those guys, it’s very awkward,” Beilein said in 2016, according to the Detroit Free Press. “You just do the best you can with it. That’s another discussion for some other time. It is awkward for us, but that’s the wave of it today, that kids are going to be able to transfer to a lot of different places. If that’s what the NCAA and ADs and presidents think, then we go by it.”
A request to speak with Michigan officials for this story was declined, while a similar inquiry with Virginia Tech officials was not returned.
The restrictions on graduate transfers stem largely from concern, not only due to the prospect of having to face a former player, but because of the impact some believe the graduate transfer rule has on major college athletics as a whole. While graduate transfers have their proponents, some coaches and administrators fear it has led to the NCAA equivalent of free agency and, more damning, say the rule is being exploited by those looking to advance their athletic prospects, not their academic careers.
Statistically, there’s some merit to that argument. According to an NCAA study released in 2015, only 34 percent of Division I men’s basketball graduate transfers earned their degree and 13 percent of transfers enrolled in a program for a second major or degree completed their coursework. In football, those numbers were 28 and 15 percent, respectively. Though there is a good chance Johnson, who graduated with a 3.9 GPA and can play for two years instead of the customary one, will earn his master’s or a second baccalaureate degree, the same can’t be said for everyone.
“In a pure world, which we don’t live in, it’s wonderful to say ‘Hey, the kid manages to get done and they’ve still got a year and they want to go to grad school and they want to go someplace to major in something their school doesn’t offer. Let them go,’” Robert Morris athletic director Craig Coleman said. “If I truly believe that the majority of these graduate transfers are coming for academic reasons, then I would be OK with it. But that’s clearly not the driving force for why kids are taking advantage of this rule.”
Recently, the NCAA formed the Division I transfer working group, a commission of coaches and administrators that will study the nuances of transfers and, once that work is done, provide recommendations. The group has not yet sat down together, but it has been charged by the NCAA board of directors to, among other things, develop outcomes that “should impose the least restrictive environment for student-athletes while remaining focused on academic success and graduation.”
To some, however, the academic argument only holds so much weight. Where one group sees an athlete trying to manipulate a well-intentioned rule to their own favor, another sees an accomplished student and athlete such as Johnson unfairly trapped.
“Any connection to some type of academic progress or anything like that is simply just a smokescreen,” Ridpath said. “It’s about control. It’s about trying to restrict the athlete. It’s about making the athlete an employee. That needs to stop.”
“It’s absurd to the point of being laughable. It’s petty and it’s vindictive.” Jay Bilas on Pitt limiting where Cameron Johnson can transfer