At this point, it’s unclear how the ongoing court case involving a coalition of seven states against the NCAA over antitrust concerns with the transfer eligibility rules will end up.
A temporary restraining order is currently underway through the 2023-24 year to freeze the rules as the case goes through the court system but depending on what occurs there it could look different.
But West Virginia Athletic Director Wren Baker is generally supportive of some type of regulator on transfers. At one time transfers were required to sit out a season in all situations before the graduate transfer allowed those players that graduated to move between schools without penalty.
Eventually, it shifted to allowing a one-time transfer without penalty for student-athletes on top of the graduate transfer once they completed their degree requirements.
“That all made sense to me. The restriction on more than one transfer is not there to keep the student-athletes from having options. It’s there for the desire to graduate student-athletes,” Baker said.
That puts student-athletes in difficult spots that transfer multiple times in pursuit of their degree.
But because of the number of athletes that were attempting to transfer a second time, the NCAA put in place a more strict waiver process due to requests from the membership.
That is where the biggest misstep of the process came into play with a subjective waiver process. The solution to that is complicated but could be eased with either allowing no second-time waivers or putting in place an objective system in order to determine who would get one.
Because depending on what happens with the court case, the current system forces student-athletes to make decisions on transferring before they even know if they’re eligible at their next stop.
“That’s just a risk that should not have to be there. We should be able to determine now if we’re going to grant a waiver and what would trigger it,” Baker said. “There shouldn’t be any subjectivity.”
As long as it meets the legal challenges, one way to accomplish that is to educate student-athletes up front on a one-time transfer and the graduate transfer. Then determine a system where either waivers won’t come into play or if they do there is a list of things that will automatically trigger them.
“Because at least then everybody knows,” Baker said.
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