NCAA Working Group Has Overall Good Transfer Ideas

Let’s start with a bit of fact checking. Contrary to the belief of some coaches, there are no concrete proposals to change NCAA transfer legislation at this time. But there are ideas that could become legislative proposals as early as this year and new NCAA rules as early as next August. And while there have been a lot of bad ideas for new NCAA rules (not to mention bad NCAA legislative proposals and bad actual NCAA rules), the ideas being kicked around by the Division I Transfer Working Group are pretty good, although with a couple of important caveats.

Permission to Contact

Both the members of the working group (employees at NCAA schools) and the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee representatives favor changing permission to contact from a request tied to receiving athletics aid at the next school to notice provided to a student-athlete’s current school. While the desire to separate permission to contact from receiving a scholarship is clear, what’s less clear is whether immediately eligibility would still be something a student-athlete’s former school had a say in (more on that in a bit).

A notice system would not be entirely new to the NCAA. Division III student-athlete are allowed to self-release and discuss a transfer with other Division III institutions. In fact, the school contacting the student-athlete is prohibited from notifying the student-athlete’s current institution for at least 30 days. That sort of secret transfer recruitment would be less workable in Division I. There is also a mention in the summary of the working group’s ideas that transfer recruitment be limited to after a student-athlete’s season, which might limit midyear transferring but I’ve always feared could create a “transfer window” and more transfers overall, especially if immediate transfer eligibility is expanded.

The problematic part of the permission to contact discussion is what the working group members feel should be the consequences of giving this notice:

Under this concept, if a student explores transfer opportunities, which could include visits to other schools, the current school could have the option of not renewing athletics aid.

This doesn’t technically change NCAA Bylaw 15.3.4.2-(d), which says:

A student-athlete’s request for written permission to contact another four-year collegiate institution regarding a possible transfer does not constitute a voluntary withdrawal.

That bylaw refers to canceling or reducing a student-athlete’s aid during a school year, while the working group is discussing renewal (and this dynamic has changed with multi-year scholarships). But in the current climate, any change to a student-athlete protection like this should not even look like it was significantly weakened. The initial 30-day notice period in the Division III self-release is a good compromise. A student-athlete who gives notice they will be discussing a transfer with other schools has 30 days to do so during which their aid cannot be cancelled, reduced, or nonrenewed. Continuing to explore a transfer after 30 days would require a second notice which could carry with it the possibility of aid being terminated at the end of the current academic year.

Ethical Recruiting Rules

The working group has some high-minded ideals about bring some order to the recruiting of transfers, starting with tougher enforcement:

When schools are accused of tampering, or recruiting students from other schools to transfer, those violations are typically processed as Level II (major) violations with significant penalties attached. The group will consider prescribing a rule that tampering violations be processed as Level II (major) violations.

But then the committee delves into the land of fantasy:

Additionally, the group would like a clear, simple document created to communicate to coaches what is and isn’t allowed in transfer situations. Working with coaching associations will be a critical component of this effort, the group said.

Producing such a document is all well and good, but it won’t change the environment surrounding transfer recruitment. That document could be one sentence: “If you don’t have permission to contact an athlete at another school, you can’t say anything to anyone about them transferring to your school.” But that won’t stop the backchannel communication which is impossible to monitor and just as hard to put an athlete or third party in a position where flipping on a coach is advantageous.

Immediate Eligibility in All Sports

This idea was put in a short bullet because it is being referred to the Committee on Academics, but it needs more discussion because it’s a popular one:

An academic transfer standard for all students that would tie one-time immediate eligibility for competition after transfer to a set of academic benchmarks instead of to in what sport the student-athlete competes.

Again, we don’t have a detailed legislative proposal, but we can probably guess what this means. It means taking the one-time transfer exception in NCAA Bylaw 14.5.5.2.10, removing the sport restrictions in part (a), and increasing the academic requirement in part (c) beyond simply having been eligible had the student-athlete not transferred. We can also assume this new academic benchmark will have a 2.6 cumulative grade point average as a starting point to match the transfer adjustment in the Academic Progress Rate (APR) Calculation.

But while the idea that athletes should have to earn the right to transfer by performing in the classroom make logical sense, it ignores a whole class of athletes: those who need to transfer because their situation is affecting their classroom performance. An athlete might be just scrapping by and staying eligible because they are a poor fit at a school and will find more academic success if they transfer to a better situation.

Rather than strengthening the NCAA’s academic mission, an academic requirement beyond just eligibility here weakens it. Requiring a higher benchmark of academic performance makes it more likely that the transfers that do occur are motivated purely by athletic reasons, rather than helping athletes seek out the best fit for them both athletically and academically.

Other Ideas

• Financial Aid for Graduate Transfers: The working group is considering an idea that would require scholarships for graduate transfers to count for the duration of the graduate program, even if the student-athlete leaves before completing it. The intent is to limit one-year “rentals” of graduate transfers, but it would be another example of limiting a school’s ability to provide educational opportunities as a punishment, which is already problematic.
• APR Calculation for Graduate Students: Currently, schools get to count the retention point for graduate students regardless of whether they are retained or graduate. The ideas is these students already have degrees, so schools don’t need to be held as accountable for retaining them. But this allows graduate students to pad a team’s APR. They should either be removed from the APR entirely or schools should be held accountable for how they recruit, educate, and retain any athlete, undergrad or graduate.
• Internships for Post-Baccalaureate Athletes: This idea would allow athletes, instead of enrolling in a graduate program or second bachelor’s degree, to instead get academic credit (and thus stay eligible) for internships or other “experiential learning programs”. It’s an excellent idea in theory, but like the push to make semesters abroad more accessible to athletes, I question how well it can work in practice if the internship is not with the athletic department itself.