Illinois Football: NCAA has no idea what it’s doing with Luke Ford decision

Luke Ford decided to transfer from Georgia to Illinois football to be close to his ailing grandfather, but the NCAA won’t let him play right away.

First it was Virginia Tech’s Brock Hoffman. Now it’s Illinois’ Luke Ford.

The NCAA is denying hardship waiver claims left and right for serious reasons other than “I didn’t win the starting job at my previous school” this offseason.

Ford decided to transfer from Georgia where he was expected to have a solid career closer to home at Illinois to be closer to his ailing grandfather, but the NCAA denied his hardship waiver for a couple of reasons.

One, Ford’s home is 193 miles away from Champaign, Ill., which is outside the 100-mile radius required to be considered close to home by the NCAA. And two, the NCAA said that Ford’s grandfather is not part of his “nuclear family” which apparently means he’s not close enough to him to be considered “family” — which is ridiculous.

The former four-star recruit and top-ranked player in the state of Illinois in the 2018 class decided to transfer because his parents couldn’t afford to keep traveling to see him play each week and his grandparents wouldn’t be able to see much of him while he’s in Georgia with their health deteriorating.

The move made sense, but not to the NCAA.

Illinois is going to help Ford appeal the waiver denial, and deservedly so. He seems to have the perfect reason for transferring, but the NCAA only wants to grant hardship waivers to its stars who want to play immediately because they weren’t No. 1 on the depth chart at their former schools.

Let’s hope this gets sorted out because, well, this is insane. The NCAA doesn’t seem to care about all of its student-athletes, just a select few.