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Jay BilasCollege Basketball analyst
We saw it when Kansas State received a list of 35 schools to which Corey Sutton would consider transferring, but blocked him from all 35. After public outcry and after Kansas State football coach Bill Snyder humiliated himself in an on-camera interview on the subject, Kansas State gave Sutton his full release to transfer anywhere.
Johnson, a summa cum laude graduate of Pittsburgh, is the poster child for this issue. Johnson is the son of two proud Pitt graduates, one of whom played basketball for the Panthers. Johnson was recruited by Jamie Dixon, who left Pitt to coach at TCU. Dixon was replaced by Kevin Stallings, who left Vanderbilt to take the Pitt job. According to Johnson's parents, Johnson had always wanted to attend North Carolina. Now that he had graduated from Pitt, with honors and in three years, he had that opportunity. There is no allegation or hint that there was any tampering, poaching or anything improper in Johnson's choice to leave Pittsburgh and play at North Carolina.
When Johnson told Pittsburgh that he wanted to transfer to North Carolina, he was told, due to his exemplary performance as an honor student, he would be allowed to contact any ACC school, but would not be released to transfer to any ACC school or any school on Pittsburgh's schedule. Johnson was told by a coach and an athletic director that had each just left a job while under contract to come to Pitt that he could not transfer to the school of his choice. That the associate athletic director that made the case to the Pitt appeal committee for Pitt's restrictive transfer policy also just left Pitt for Oregon State was especially galling, and on the verge of hypocrisy.
Yet, Pitt persisted and vowed to fight for its policy to restrict a grad transfer to the bitter end. A Pitt source confirmed to me that this was less about Johnson than an effort to gain clarity on the grad transfer rule, and to force a change to the rule. Pitt was willing to lose the battle on Johnson to win the war on the rule itself.
To those in the Pittsburgh community, the restriction made sense, even though it is more of a rationalization than a well-reasoned policy. They cited competitive balance, that Pitt had invested in the development of Johnson and had compensated him, yet Johnson was going to walk away to a competitor, which was fundamentally unfair in their view. Pitt, they argued, was protecting the competitive landscape of college sports and deterring players from leaving and deterring competing schools from poaching players.
I find all of those "reasons" to be unpersuasive, excuses and rationalizations more than reasoned and consistent policy positions. This is not about Pittsburgh or its people. Pitt is a great place and it has great people. This is about policy. The policy on transfers on the NCAA level, the conference level, and the institutional level is simply bad. It needs to be changed.
In an unusual move, the NCAA provided Pittsburgh and North Carolina with an interpretation of the graduate transfer rule in Bylaw 14.6.1 and told each that the grad transfer rule was "all or nothing." If Pitt denied Johnson a release to transfer, he could not play at all. Essentially, according to the NCAA interpretation of the rule, any school could keep any player from leaving as a graduate transfer and accepting aid and playing anywhere else. After the NCAA interpretation (and no doubt the public beating Pitt's reputation was taking nationally), after having compliance, legal and administrative input, Pitt folded and released Johnson fully and completely.
In the end, for whatever reason and after a long and torturous route, Pitt did the right thing.
Let's take a look at the policy positions of the NCAA and its member institutions, and how they relate to and affect its positions on transfers.
These are students, not employees
The NCAA position on "student athletes" is clear and unmistakable. The NCAA has asserted time and time again in court proceedings, under oath, that players are not employees, but are just students who happen to be athletes and are students to be treated like any other student. It is usually in the context of paying athletes or allowing athletes to be provided compensation for their athletic prowess, but it applies across the board.
If they are just students, like any other student, how can any institution complain when a student decides to leave the school to pursue his or her education elsewhere? Whether on scholarship or not, there is no restriction for any non-athlete student leaving one school and attending another and being able to receive aid or participate in any extracurricular activity.
Yet, with athletes (and only athletes), the school the athlete is leaving has the power to limit to where an athlete can transfer and receive aid and participate in varsity athletics. That is the equivalent of a "noncompete" provision in an employment contract. If not employees, how can NCAA rules allow any school to restrict the choice and movement of any student?
Noncompete provisions are bargained for between employers and employees and essentially paid for through employee compensation. According to NCAA policy, athletes are not employees and are not compensated. Their expenses are covered, but nothing more.
Some would argue that players are paid because they can receive a scholarship and incidental expenses in exchange for playing their sports. According to the NCAA, a scholarship is not pay. It is an educational expense. Clearly, no reasonable person would consider a Morehead-Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina to be an employee and therefore subject to restrictions that would be the equivalent of a noncompete provision. If so, how could NCAA institutions block the transfer of a student simply because he or she is an athlete?