Football Coaches Against New Transfer Rules

[50's PONY]

College football coaches oppose rule easing transfers
Posted 6/4/2006 11:43 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions | Subscribe to stories like this



By Jack Carey, USA TODAY
An NCAA rules change that apparently was off many schools' radar screens for a few weeks could alter college sports rosters.
The NCAA Board of Directors in April approved legislation that allows athletes with eligibility remaining to transfer without having to sit out a year at their new school, provided they already have earned a bachelor's degree.

In most NCAA sports, players already are allowed to transfer without sitting out. But in football, basketball and hockey, transfers sit a year at their new school. The new legislation ends that waiting period for graduate students.

Grant Teaff, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, says the rule, while good for athletes, is not good for football. Teaff says he was not aware of the change until about a week ago, but most coaches he's talked to want it rescinded, fearing it could lead to a version of graduate-student free agency. Teaff says he needs 100 override votes from college presidents by June 27.

"We think you'd have an average of as many as three players a year at each (Division I-A) school who could be candidates (to graduate and then transfer)," he says. "Now, most youngsters are not going to run off and jump at another school, but this could create the opportunities for the kind of (illicit) recruitment that we've gotten away from."

The highest-profile player to take advantage is Richard Kovalcheck, a former starting quarterback at Arizona who is transferring to Vanderbilt, where he will be eligible to play this fall.

Kovalcheck graduated in three years from Arizona and will start coursework this summer toward a postgraduate degree in management at Vanderbilt. He will have two years of eligibility left, and that's the key reason the Commodores were interested in him, coach Bobby Johnson says.

"I don't think it will happen that many times because you've still got to graduate, and I don't think there will be that many (graduates) with one year still left," says Johnson, who points out that a transferring player still has to be granted a release by his old school. "Plus, you'd be using up a scholarship for a one-year guy."