It appears the NCAA may be considering changing the transfer rule and allowing transfers to play right away rather than sitting out a year:

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Word leaked on Tuesday that the NCAA is reviewing a potential rule that would allow college basketball players to transfer one time without penalty if they met academic requirements.

247 Sports' Andrew Slater had the initial story and the NCAA later confirmed with a release on their website: "An academic transfer standard for all students that would tie one-time immediate eligibility for competition after transfer to a set of academic benchmarks instead of to in what sport the student-athlete competes."

Let me make my stance on the issue clear: Allowing transfers to be immediately eligible would be detrimental to the sport. You can't convince me otherwise. It would be and create absolute, utter chaos.
"It would turn into one of the dirtiest recruiting periods that you've ever seen," Indiana coach Archie Miller told Scout.

Every lay up and handshake line would turn into a recruiting pitch. Every interaction with an opposing player or parent would be an opportunity to lay the groundwork for a potential move.

"You'll have guys talking to your players when they are in your gym," Miller added. "Coaches will recruit players right after games and now you can go directly to the source, it would cripple teams and programs."

Could you imagine if Landry Shamet woke up in May and decided he wanted to play his final season at Kentucky? Or if Robert Williams decided he wanted to play in a different conference, so he transferred to Duke before heading off the to NBA Draft?

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http://scout.com/college/basketball/recruiting/Article/NCAA-coaches-loudly-speaking-out-on-potential-transfer-rule--107036402

Not sure why he had to drag Robert Williams into it, but I agree with the general theme of the article that such a rule would be rough on weaker programs, who could spend a couple years developing a player only to lose him to a bigger program.

It's the NCAA finally dealing with shamateurism like the tennis circuit did in 1968.

I think this is a potential move by the NCAA to prevent losing an eventual lawsuit that's going to cripple the entire system.

If you aren't going to pay the players, then to me it's extremely difficult to justify from a legal standpoint why they can't switch schools and play right away if they meet certain academic criteria.

That's not to say it's a great idea from the perspective of how it impacts the sport itself, I just think the NCAA is looking for a way to keep the model going for a little while longer in the face of growing momentum that the big sport athletes should be paid.

Not a great idea. It's going to cause a scenario where top tier teams cherry pick talent.

Why not just lift the scholarship limitations while you're at it. So Kentucky and Duke can carry 20 5*'s each on their squads.

Meh, I don't agree that the top teams will cherry pick, as it would be bad for recruiting. That does not mean it will not happen from time to time. But I don't think it would be good for business if UK/Duke got in the habit of recruiting current college players over high school players. And they could risk not filling all 13 spots if they neglect high school studs for college players. I just don't see it happening that way.

The interesting thing will be how the NCAA plans to regulate this. I would hope there will be rules/regulations on how a school can "recruit" a current student-athlete. Maybe even set a limit, only allowing one player per school to be immediately eligible. It will be interesting, but I don't think this will ruin the game, there are already plenty of things that can be attributed to that.

_lefraud_ said:

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Meh, I don't agree that the top teams will cherry pick, as it would be bad for recruiting. That does not mean it will not happen from time to time. But I don't think it would be good for business if UK/Duke got in the habit of recruiting current college players over high school players. And they could risk not filling all 13 spots if they neglect high school studs for college players. I just don't see it happening that way.

The interesting thing will be how the NCAA plans to regulate this. I would hope there will be rules/regulations on how a school can "recruit" a current student-athlete. Maybe even set a limit, only allowing one player per school to be immediately eligible. It will be interesting, but I don't think this will ruin the game, there are already plenty of things that can be attributed to that.

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The very top programs won't need to do it - Kentucky, Duke, UNC will get the future NBA All-Star one and done type players; the beneficiaries may be in the next tier or two, say, like us. We benefit from guys like Jalen, House, and Nebo coming here. Now we can get those types of players without tying up a roster spot for the transfer year.

This is sort of an interesting situation of the NCAA coming up with two solutions that are polar opposites of each other. Their one idea is basically nobody sits, their other idea is that everybody sits regardless of the situation. Again to stop them from having to be the ones who decide whose sob stories are legit every year and whose aren't.

Personally I think it's like anything else, if a player wants to transfer somewhere, they will. I don't think it's going to be a major change from what's already happening.

LawHall88 said:

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_lefraud_ said:

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Meh, I don't agree that the top teams will cherry pick, as it would be bad for recruiting. That does not mean it will not happen from time to time. But I don't think it would be good for business if UK/Duke got in the habit of recruiting current college players over high school players. And they could risk not filling all 13 spots if they neglect high school studs for college players. I just don't see it happening that way.

The interesting thing will be how the NCAA plans to regulate this. I would hope there will be rules/regulations on how a school can "recruit" a current student-athlete. Maybe even set a limit, only allowing one player per school to be immediately eligible. It will be interesting, but I don't think this will ruin the game, there are already plenty of things that can be attributed to that.

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The very top programs won't need to do it - Kentucky, Duke, UNC will get the future NBA All-Star one and done type players; the beneficiaries may be in the next tier or two, say, like us. We benefit from guys like Jalen, House, and Nebo coming here. Now we can get those types of players without tying up a roster spot for the transfer year.

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I agree. I think the small conference schools would get really hosed by this. They would have a very difficult time keeping their best players.

How many players are going to play at 4 schools???

I'd say 30%

The proposed rule would only allow the player to transfer once with our sitting out a year.

To me it's either this change, or coaches have to wait a year if they want to change schools.
Not fair for them to do whatever they want

At first glance this will do for basketball what the huge number of scholarships does for football. More of the talent will be at fewer schools, and you're going to see even more regular season non-conference matchups that are just total blowout wastes of time.

JJxvi said:

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At first glance this will do for basketball what the huge number of scholarships does for football. More of the talent will be at fewer schools, and you're going to see even more regular season non-conference matchups that are just total blowout wastes of time.

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How so? Nobody is talking about increasing the scholarship numbers.

I mean the same effect by a different mechanism. It allows the big teams a second shot at players they didn't recruit the first time, so I think it will increase our advantages as a power conference school with lots of exposure, over say, the mediocre mid major conference schools because everybody now has more freedom to turn over their roster, bring in new talent and flush mistakes back down.

It's a different cause, but the result is similar to the fact that big college football programs can get large numbers of the top players into their program each year. Imagine if basketball had 18 scholarships to begin with, we would lose many more players to elite programs than we do now, because they have more spots, and somebody like say Stephen F Austin would lose most of the players they are getting now, because programs like us would have to be filling our open slots, plus taking our extra 5, etc. More schollies to give shifts the talent to fewer teams, and I believe this will have a similar effect.

I disagree a little bit only because of how few scholarships there are in basketball as it is. If the Kentucky's and Duke's of the world start taking more transfers, then that's fewer recruits they'll sign, and those guys have to sign somewhere.

The effect might be that it shifts experience up the ladder a bit. Take us for a example, a junior from a mid-major is probably more valuable on the court sooner than a 100+ ranked recruit, so maybe we take more transfers, but that means those schools losing a lot of transfers are signing more talented players.

Small conference teams would have to get better at coaching up first year players, but those players would be more talented than the players they were getting in the past, so I'm not sure it's much of a shift in talent overall. I think it would be more of a shakeup in how coaches coach at mid-major schools. People that can quickly develop talent would start being more valuable than guys who rely on players coming in and learning their system for a couple of years.

Pumpkinhead said:

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LawHall88 said:

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_lefraud_ said:

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Meh, I don't agree that the top teams will cherry pick, as it would be bad for recruiting. That does not mean it will not happen from time to time. But I don't think it would be good for business if UK/Duke got in the habit of recruiting current college players over high school players. And they could risk not filling all 13 spots if they neglect high school studs for college players. I just don't see it happening that way.

The interesting thing will be how the NCAA plans to regulate this. I would hope there will be rules/regulations on how a school can "recruit" a current student-athlete. Maybe even set a limit, only allowing one player per school to be immediately eligible. It will be interesting, but I don't think this will ruin the game, there are already plenty of things that can be attributed to that.

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The very top programs won't need to do it - Kentucky, Duke, UNC will get the future NBA All-Star one and done type players; the beneficiaries may be in the next tier or two, say, like us. We benefit from guys like Jalen, House, and Nebo coming here. Now we can get those types of players without tying up a roster spot for the transfer year.

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I agree. I think the small conference schools would get really hosed by this. They would have a very difficult time keeping their best players.

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Not just smaller conferences, but even schools like A&M in power conferences that aren't traditional powers that have their coaches scooped up a la Billy Gillispie in 2007. What if 6 or more players decide to transfer out at once? That would devastate a program for possibly years.

http://athleticdirectoru.com/articles/investigating-college-basketballs-transfer-movement/

Lots of data

Belton Ag said:

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Pumpkinhead said:

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LawHall88 said:

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_lefraud_ said:

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Meh, I don't agree that the top teams will cherry pick, as it would be bad for recruiting. That does not mean it will not happen from time to time. But I don't think it would be good for business if UK/Duke got in the habit of recruiting current college players over high school players. And they could risk not filling all 13 spots if they neglect high school studs for college players. I just don't see it happening that way.

The interesting thing will be how the NCAA plans to regulate this. I would hope there will be rules/regulations on how a school can "recruit" a current student-athlete. Maybe even set a limit, only allowing one player per school to be immediately eligible. It will be interesting, but I don't think this will ruin the game, there are already plenty of things that can be attributed to that.

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The very top programs won't need to do it - Kentucky, Duke, UNC will get the future NBA All-Star one and done type players; the beneficiaries may be in the next tier or two, say, like us. We benefit from guys like Jalen, House, and Nebo coming here. Now we can get those types of players without tying up a roster spot for the transfer year.

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I agree. I think the small conference schools would get really hosed by this. They would have a very difficult time keeping their best players.

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Not just smaller conferences, but even schools like A&M in power conferences that aren't traditional powers that have their coaches scooped up a la Billy Gillispie in 2007. What if 6 or more players decide to transfer out at once? That would devastate a program for possibly years.

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Exactly. The reason the rule exists is to prevent poaching.

The ncaa can get around the ameraturism thing, because anyone transferring has the option to go pro anywhere. The ncaa isnt forcing amyone to go to school.
Allowing free transfer would not be good. There would need to be significant overhaul of most recruiting and scholorship limit rules. It would be a mess policing tampering.

Seems to me that this would create a farm system for the Basketball Blue Bloods.

Certainly players would feel comraderie at their current schools, but certainly some "under the radar guys" that develop well (like a Robert Williams) may move to a KU/UK/NC to compete for a NC if the current team doesn't show the capacity to win big.

In case anybody is wondering, this won't happen in the foreseeable future.

It's not really self-loathing, nobody here volunteered RW as an example, he's the one the original author of the story used. OP even said "not sure why he had to drag Robert Williams into it..."

Except the post I was responding too.

Maybe he was just using the same example as the article? I'm just saying it doesn't seem to me like anyone out-of-the-blue volunteered that RW would be the type of player that would do this.

It didn't come across as self-loathing to me anyway.

mdanyc03 said:

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Keller6Ag91 said:

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Seems to me that this would create a farm system for the Basketball Blue Bloods.

Certainly players would feel comraderie at their current schools, but certainly some "under the radar guys" that develop well (like a Robert Williams) may move to a KU/UK/NC to compete for a NC if the current team doesn't show the capacity to win big.

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Let's please minimize the self loathing and not use Robert Williams as an example. Robert Williams chose staying at A&M over making millions in the NBA. Robert Williams loves A&M. This guy regularly tweets about the softball, track, and other teams. He is an Aggie through and through.

I think actually the more common cases would be the highly recruited guys that transfer for more immediate playing time or different role. The Malik Newman's and Marques Bolden's.

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Sorry, all. No self-loathing required as I certainly don't think Robert fits the bill here other than being an underhyped high school player who ascended up the draft charts in a single year. I'm certainly aware of both his love for A&M and his desire to mature in a 2nd year here.

It might help small schools, too. Harder for the blue bloods to keep sophomores who haven't played much.