MAR. 7 -- On December 2, 2017 Jimbo Fisher, the head football coach at Florida State who won a national title for the program three years earlier, left the program for the same gig at Texas A&M. Florida State was initially stunned, but it didn’t take long (three days) for them to find their replacement: Willie Taggart, the first-year coach at the University of Oregon. Ignored in the hoopla of ludicrous coaching contracts and enraged fans were the abandoned players. While the two coaches involved could leave to wherever they wanted and were rewarded for leaving, the players weren’t allowed to leave and were limited in where they could go. The NCAA should drop their bogus transfer rules when coaches leave programs, regardless of the “chaos” that would ensue.

     Under the NCAA’s current format, if a player wants to transfer they have to get permission from their coach. The coach usually grants the transfer, but can outline a list of schools the player cannot go to. Once the player does transfer, they are forced to sit out a year at their new school and “redshirt.” The current system skews all power to coaches when it comes to player transfer, with many coaches claiming if the current regulations were in place, college sports would be the wild west, with players switching teams at halftime. Although I believe players should be able to transfer without consequence under any circumstance, this piece focuses on something everyone should be able to get behind: transfer rules when a coach leaves a program.

     Athletes often choose programs, not for the school, but for the coach. Coaches run different systems at each school and recruit players that best fit into their scheme. Often before a player decides to even visit a school he has built up relationships with the staff. When coaches leave the next coach often forbids players from transferring to the old coach’s school. However high school athletes don’t have this bind. It’s common to see a player flip their commitment to follow a coach, as was the case for Tevin Mack in 2014 when he followed Shaka Smart from VCU to Texas. In most cases, a coach can be far more important than the school itself.

     Opponents of transfer reform claim that barring players from transferring to specific schools and making them sit out a year is just a non-compete act. This argument would be fine if these athletes were actual employees of the schools. However, as the NCAA has made clear countless times, these are STUDENT-athletes who aren’t being paid. Therefore, they shouldn’t be treated as real employees and suffer from non-competes. If a star math student suddenly decides they want to transfer schools because all of the reputable math professors from their current school leave, they should be able to leave. Just because they transfer doesn’t mean they can’t study math at their next school. If we are going to treat these athletes as students, they should be like all other students.

     The final argument made by coaches against reform is that you would see mid-major players who blossom their sophomore and junior years bolt for bigger programs. The irony cannot be lost that many collegiate coaches simply use mid-majors as stepping stones for their dream jobs at power conference schools. Mike Kryzyzewki leaving Army, Archie Miller leaving Dayton, and Shaka Smart leaving VCU, just to name a few. If coaches are allowed to move around freely with no consequence, players should too.