Transfers, need for reform, on display
SAN ANTONIO» As the NCAA deals with corruption in major-college men’s basketball and faces questions about sexual assault scandals on campus, the association is finally moving toward reform on a far less somber subject that has been every bit as vexing: transfer rules.
“How complicated could this be?” NCAA president Mark Emmert said Thursday at the Final Four in San Antonio. “It’s about students changing schools. And yet I’ve never seen anything that’s quite as intractable a problem as this one because you just can’t get agreement.”
After years of NCAA committees and task forces talking about reforming transfer rules, change is on the horizon.
The latest working group expects to have a proposal for NCAA leadership to consider by late April, so real reform could be in place by the next school year.
The result is likely to limit the power that schools and coaches have over if and where a player can transfer, and maybe even eliminate the required redshirt year for some transfers — but not all.
In men’s college basketball, the number of Division I players who transfer from one four-year school to another has risen from 10 percent in 2010 to about 13 percent in 2016, according to the NCAA.
At the Final Four this weekend, each team will start at least one player who transferred in. Including players sitting out to comply with NCAA rules, Villanova (one), Kansas (two), Loyola Chicago (three) and Michigan (three) have a combined nine transfers on their rosters.
Michigan’s three transfers have all taken different paths to Ann Arbor.
Charles Matthews started his college career at Kentucky, one of many star recruits in coach John Calipari’s program. After playing sparingly as a freshman, he decided to transfer and landed at Michigan — where he had to sit out his sophomore season to satisfy NCAA rules. It’s a called a year in residence.
“It’s not fair, but it is what it is,” Matthews said.
Senior spark plug Duncan Robinson came to Michigan after playing his freshman season at Division III Williams College.
“It was huge for me,” Robinson said about sitting out a season. “I definitely wouldn’t have been able to be impactful if I had played right away. Or as impactful. In terms of if it’s fair, that’s a whole different conversation. Obviously, there’s some contradictions in the world of college basketball. You could go on for hours. But I’m not going to be changing them any time soon.”
Not all NCAA athletes are required to do a socalled year in residence. In many sports, there is a one-time exception that allows athletes to transfer from one school to another without sitting out.
The graduate transfer rule has been a point of contention among many coaches, especially those at midmajor schools who fear losing key players to higher-profile programs in more prominent conferences.