College football transfer rules must be fixed, and fixed now

College football players are already taken advantage of by the NCAA, conferences and even their own schools. One way they can be helped is for the transfer rules to be changed immediately.

College football transfer rules are a joke. But they’re not funny. They are an irrational and unfair set of guidelines set to protect the schools, to make sure everyone is heading to the bank (except the players) and to keep coaches who are afraid of competitiveness at bay.

And they need to be changed and changed now.

Not tomorrow. Not after breakfast. NOW! (apologies to Stephen King and Frank Darabont).

The simple fact that there are any transfer rules at all makes this all the more puzzling. Football players are not professionals. They are not paid. They are not under contract (well, more on that later). They are amateur student-athletes (or, that’s what the NCAA keeps telling us every time they suspend a player or hand down punishments to a program), and there should be nothing — absolutely nothing — preventing these young men from attending school and playing football wherever they choose.

More from Saturday Blitz

Until recently, the transfer rules were somewhat ambiguous, but at least applied with relative equality. Unless you were a graduate student with eligibility remaining, you had to sit out a year if you transferred to another Division I school. There could be a rare — very rare — exception under extenuating circumstances.

Then with the dawn of the “transfer portal” (which is still one of the most ridiculous monikers for a list of names I’ve ever heard) the NCAA in its ultimate wisdom updated its guidelines for granting a waiver for immediate eligibility.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

Between 2015-2018, if you had a waiver request granted you had an extra year of eligibility added. You didn’t get to play right away. Now it’s for immediate play, and what exactly are the criteria to have your waiver request granted by the NCAA?

Nobody seems to know. Players don’t know. Coaches don’t seem to know. The Tootsie Pop owl doesn’t know. Not even The Shadow knows.

Oh, there are some lines of legalese to help protect the NCAA regardless of their decision, but it’s mostly left in the hands of those who hear the appeals and read the waiver requests to decide who is approved and who is denied. Here’s a passage of the NCAA transfer waiver rules which were updated in 2018.

"-The transfer is due to documented mitigating circumstances that are outside the student-athlete’s control and directly impact the health, safety and well-being of the student-athlete-At the time of transfer to the certifying institution, the student-athlete would have been athletically and academically eligible and in good standing on the team had he or she remained at the previous institution;-The certifying institution must certify that the student-athlete meets percentage-of degree requirements-The previous institution’s athletics administration does not oppose the transfer."

So really, by reading that it’s completely open to interpretation or interference from any number of parties. For example:

Justin Fields: Transferred from Georgia to Ohio State because (let’s be honest here) he knew he wasn’t going to supplant Jake Fromm as the starting quarterback. Waiver – approved.
Tate Martell: Transferred from Ohio State to Miami because (let’s be honest here) he knew Justin Fields was getting the job. Waiver – approved.
Brock Hoffman: Transferred from Coastal Carolina to Virginia Tech to be near his mother who had just undergone brain surgery to have a tumor removed. Waiver – denied.
Luke Ford: Transferred from Georgia to Illinois to be near his ailing grandparents and so that his grandfather could see him play in person before he passed away. Waiver – denied (twice).

Does that seem like the guidelines above are being applied with equal weight and fairness here? Not even close.

ALSO READ: The NCAA Owes Luke Ford An Apology

So has this change in verbiage brought on more cases of student-athletes changing schools and requesting waivers for immediate eligibility? You bet your BCS it has. Oh, the NCAA would have you believe differently. They maintain that there has been no marked increase and that the perception of a problem exists due to a few “high profile” cases.

Per the NCAA’s own research:

"“The Committee for Legislative Relief is reviewing current transfer waiver guidelines to make sure they are in line with the membership’s expectations. We do believe attention on a small number of high-profile requests can skew perceptions of the scope of staff and committee review. Each waiver request is reviewed individually, as they each present a unique fact pattern and almost always confidential information of the student. Our committee and the staff operate with the membership’s guidelines in mind, and are not driven by a specific approval percentage.”"

Anybody else care to call BS on this?

Not to mention, the research they conducted only compared numbers to the 2014-15 academic year — the last time waivers for immediate play were granted. During that span, players were essentially rolling the dice and the chance of having a waiver granted (without the current verbiage) was slim. What we have now is a giant loophole for high-profile players and powerful programs.

But the NCAA is looking into some changes … changes that will actually make it harder for a player to obtain a waiver (please, read that sentence again before you go on).

That begs the question asked at the start of this column.

Why do we have transfer rules at all?

Coaches or administrators don’t have to sit out when they decide to take a job at another school, and these are men who signed contracts … for money (too much damn money). Players are already exploited and left out of the cash-cow counting room, how can the NCAA even fathom limiting their life choices?

It’s not like players have signed a contract to play for their first-chosen school with a no-compete clause.

Oh wait, there’s that pesky “Letter of Intent”. That little document giving a university ultimate power over a player. The Letter of Intent acts as a quasi-contract, holding players accountable for their decision. Too often, coaches hold the LOI over a player’s head like a blackmail letter.

You want power over their decisions? Pay them. Plain and simple. Until then, student-athletes should have the freedom to attend, study and play at any university of their choosing provided they meet all the academic requirements.

This isn’t hard, Mr. Emmert. This is easy. This is fair. This is what should have happened years ago. Abolish these ridiculous transfer rules and let the chips fall where they may. I’m sure Nick Saban will survive if one of his prized recruits decides to hop the border and transfer to Georgia. Dabo Swinney isn’t likely to lose any ground in the ACC if a player who isn’t even starting opts to suit up for a rival.

But they’d have you believe that isn’t true. They want “fair competition”.

Hold on…

Ok, I’m back. Had to stop laughing after typing that last sentence.

The chances of a player being paid beyond a scholarship and pittance of a stipend in the near future is pretty slim. So these transfer rules, regulations, guidelines, directives, commandments, royal proclamations — or whatever you’d like to call them — need to go away now.