College Free Agents – Getting Better but Should be more

College Free Agents are becoming a reality.  The NCAA has loosened up some of the transfer rules.  This is a good thing.  They need to go much farther in how they are letting this play out.  It never seemed fair that the players had to commit to a university and a coach but they did not have to do the same.  The scholarships were structured in one year deals that could be terminated by the University when ever they wanted to.

History of Scholarships

The history of College Football Scholarships is quite interesting.  More generally these rules apply across the board to almost any student that gets a Scholarship.  Athletic scholarships formally started in 1957 and were governed by the NCAA for the most part they still are.  The were designated to last for four years.  Coaches had a problem with this.  They wanted the option to pull a scholarship from an under performing athlete.  In 1973 they got their wish.  All athletic scholarships were designated to be a series of one year scholarships.  The way this was set up only benefited the school and in no way added any benefit to the athletes.

The single year scholarship stayed in place for 40 years.   This was also a time of huge growth for college football.   The scholarships were still single year.  The school now had the ability to change to multi year scholarships if they wanted to.  There are some numbers out there.  They are not complete and are difficult to come by.  I am sure that most Universities do not really want people to know the numbers. Allowing muli year scholarships was a step in the right direction.  The schools stil have way to much control and power.  This is something that needs to change.

Recent Events have Changed My MIndset

I used to be of the mind set that if you decide to go to a school then you should stick it out.  That was before I started to understand how all of this works.  I used to think that getting a free education was a fair exchange between the athlete and the university.   For some players it still it.  For others it is clearly not a fair trade.  There is a certain subset of players that are responsible for a larger portion of the income a College will get from each sport.  Should this player get a larger part of the pot?   Maybe they should.

This post is not really about pay for the athletes but it is about control for the players.   This is slowly starting to change with the Graduate transfer and the ability of players to ask for a hardship waiver to be able to move to a new team.   Since the beginning of time.  The coaches and staff have had the ability to move where ever they were offered a job.  It has not even mattered if they have had a long term contract.   You see it all the time.  A coach will start at a lower leve college.  Do a good job and then move to a mid level university. Then after a good year move to what a lot of people call a destination job.  After each step the players this coach recruited are stuck at that university.  The coach and most likely coaches that recruited them are gone.

Sitting out a year is crazy

At that point a large numer of players could move on if they wanted to but they would have to sit out a year.  Unless they are granted a hardship waiver.  So they would lose a year of eligibility because the coaches that recruited them have abandoned the program.  I do not see any way of fixing that part of the equation.  coaches should be able to move.  That brings in to play that the players should be able to move as well.  Since the coaches moved on there is no guarantee that the new coaches will want the player either.  So it would only be fair that the players could say that they don’t want to play for that coach.

How do you prevent them from just randomly deciding to move?  Not sure but if the coaches are going to be able to do that then the players should have at least some ability to do that as well.

Players should be allowed One No Penalty Transfer

The rules need to be amended to allow each player one free move with out any punishment.  This move could come about for any reason.  If the coach leaves. The player is not getting the playing time. Or for any other reason.  This gives them the same ability as the coaching staff.  This would also give them the same ability as anyone else that attends a college or university.  There is no rule that says if someone were to transfer from one University to another that they have to sit out a year before starting classes.   The notion that we make players sit out a year is just crazy talk at best.

When an athlete decides to transfer the school should not have any ability to block them.  This was being demonstrated by Oklahoma by trying to block the ability of Austin Kendall from transferring to West Virginia.  I get why they want to do this.  But it is something that they should just have to deal with.  They had no problem going to and getting Jalen Hurts to transfer in from Alabama.  They did not go and get him to have him sit on the bench.

Schools to much control

At best Oklahoma would tell Kendall that he can “compete” for the starting job.   Tate Martell was in the same situation with Ohio State.  If Martell had wanted to transfer to a school in the Big Ten you can be sure that Ohio State would have tried to block that move.   This should not be an option.  The schools should not have the right or the ability to block a player from moving on to a school of their choosing.

As the money in College Football continues to grow.  The schools and the NCAA are going to have to face that at some point they are going to have to give the players more money.   How they are going to do that is an unknown at this point.  There could be a pay scale based on performance.  Or all players could get some kind of extended stipend.  What ever it is at some point it is going to happen.  Then you are going to have to deal with contracts.   Not just a scholarship but employment contracts.  It is difficult to say how this will affect the College Sports.

In the mean time the transfer rules need to be updated to give the athletes the ability to control their own future. College Free Agents is going to be a reality.  It actually is here in a sence.   I am not sure how this year compares to last year so far but it seems like the number of high profile transfers has gone up.

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