-Jim Root
Disclaimer: the below opinions belong solely to Jim; any shade or outrage should be directed specifically at him. His Twitter is @2ndChancePoints - fire away.
Among the various reasons that college basketball is definitely, irreversibly dying (or so I’m told), transfers rank a distant second behind “top prospects taking alternate routes to the pros,” as Jalen Green’s G-Leap has consumed mass media and sent many pundits scrambling to author the sport’s obituary. The college-to-pro path certainly needs some tweaks, but I’m currently more enthralled by the pending decision to allow all players a one-time waiver to transfer without sitting a year. The debate has plenty of opposition, with the #resistance settling into two subsets:
1. Transfers are inherently bad – this viewpoint is becoming harder to defend, even for its most stout defenders, and it’s mostly limited to coaches and those that are fighting the coaches’ fight in the media (think Ron Jothstein). A major tell here is any feigned incredulity at how many names are in the transfer portal, trying to implicitly make us believe that more = bad.
2. Mandatory sit-outs for non-graduate transfers are good and necessary – this rule being the status quo means there’s plenty of inertia to changing it; change is scary and has consequences, both intended and unintended. This group supports transferring as an option for athletes, but posits that a year of adjustment should be mandatory for all undergraduate students.
Each camp has its own separate issues with the pending rule change, although Camp #1 is quickly endorsing Camp #2 as it realizes the transfer ship has already sailed around the world multiple times. Even so, let’s tackle these two viewpoints separately.
Transfers are inherently bad
There’s almost definitely some merit to the idea that granting one free waiver to every player would lead to an increase in transfers. But I politely reject the idea of that being a negative in and of itself; players should have the freedom to move to a situation they feel is best for them, particularly with the benefit of a year (or two or three) of perspective while in a college environment. Each person will have a better sense of what matters to him or her, both educationally and athletically, and there’s no shame in affording someone a “mulligan” on such a huge life decision.
A lot of the data used to demonize transferring (particularly up-transfers) – decreases in scoring or usage or minutes – ignores the multitude of other factors that go into such a decision. Did the new team win more games and/or have a better chance at making the NCAA Tournament? Did the player enjoy his coach, his teammates, the whole school experience more than his prior institution?
Making ourselves the judge of whether a transfer decision was “good” or not based on individual on-court stats is overly simplistic and trivializes the choice; in my eyes, the only fair way to evaluate it is to survey the player multiple years after the fact, when he or she can make an honest assessment of whether transferring was truly in his or her best interests. Only the athlete really knows if it was a “good” decision or not.
Another argument made is that the players should have loyalty to the school that first gave them a shot, which feels like a manipulative attempt to guilt players into staying where they are. I don’t give this reasoning the time of day; if an athlete truly feels that a different situation offers a superior alternative, then a twisted sense of allegiance to an institution should never prevent him or her from seizing that opportunity. And as for loyalty to a coach? I’d argue the inverse is far more important: a coach has a responsibility to his or her players, and helping them find success in whatever way is best falls under that umbrella.
Mandatory sit-outs are necessary
As it currently stands, the sit-out rule is, at the very least, meant as a deterrent to discourage transferring. Many will want to dress it up as some major gift to athletes, but the fact remains that even though sitting has its benefits (laid out by Mike DeCourcy of Sporting News here), it still is a block to many who would otherwise seek a move. If you believe that transfers would rise without a mandatory sit-out year (and as I stated, that’s a perfectly reasonable conclusion), then you are admitting that it’s functioning as such a deterrent, whether you want to or not. It’s like putting barbed wire on the top of a fence: sure, you are welcome to climb it, and the grass may look greener on the other side, but you must be willing to navigate the razor edges and deal with the cuts that will result.
Basketball players are wired to do just that – play basketball – and taking that privilege away for a year from those that transfer is a punishment. As acknowledged above, sitting offers some advantages, but that does not mean that it should be mandatory. Learning a second language has obvious positives, too: linguistic flexibility can have far-reaching effects, opening doors of opportunity that would otherwise remain firmly locked, but it’s certainly possible to find real, measurable success without doing so.
In the same way, redshirting can benefit any player, both academically and athletically, but it’s voluntary for every non-transfer player for a reason. That decision should be made on a case-by-case basis between the player, his family, and his new coaches, just like a player first enrolling in college. Forcing a “one size fits all” rule like sitting out unfairly penalizes the plethora of athletes who simply seek a better fit.
And I’d be remiss if I did not mention this: only football, men’s and women’s basketball, hockey, and baseball require athletes to sit out, as the current NCAA rule stands. If the justification is “adjusting academically” (and ostensibly, that’s what it is), why would that rule not be uniform across every sport? The answer: it shouldn’t! It shouldn’t be a rule in any sport. Let it be a case-by-case basis for each athlete, rather than a one-size-must-fit-all mandate.
Obviously, transfers are not going anywhere, so the members of Group #1 above need to simply accept mass player movement as a part of life. The debate is now far more about the terms of each player’s movement.
In my mind, the goal should be to offer the best overall deal for the student-athlete community as a whole. As long as the sit-out rule is mandatory, a percentage of athletes who would otherwise move to new (and in their minds, improved) situations will be deterred from doing so. Even if some transfers do benefit from sitting, the overall harm to the entire student-athlete community via players remaining unhappy in disadvantageous circumstances outweighs those benefits.
None of this even speaks to the ridiculous waiver environment that currently exists, an already-murky process with even more absurdly foggy timelines (approving a September waiver request in January is ridiculous), and that’s ultimately the NCAA’s largest justification for potentially approving this change. But it would also be a collective benefit to student-athletes as a whole, and one that empowers each and every one of them to actively seek the best situation possible for him or her.