How will dropping the one-time transfer limit affect the college football landscape? | College Football Enquirer
Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde discuss the NCAA Division I council’s recommendation to drop the one-time transfer limit, and debate how it will affect the college football landscape moving forward.
Video Transcript
DAN WETZEL: The one thing I cannot stand about, I-- not stand, but I disagree with it-- that's gone on is the transfer portal. I don't think you should be able to transfer without sitting out a year because I do think there is a-- there has to be a-- this is a product and everyone benefits by the product.
It is not a punishment to spend one year extra at college and getting free room and board, tuition, education, training, all those things. So I think they should still have-- they should never have gone away from having to sit a year. The coaches abused it.
PAT FORDE: Totally.
DAN WETZEL: The athletic directors abused it. They started saying you couldn't transfer in conference. What do we have, that one, was Mike Gundy had like 37 schools on a quarterback? In Miami, he used to try to block everybody in state and everybody in the Southeast.
Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. This is now, they're slaughtered. And now, they're recommending unlimited transfers, no penalty ever.
PAT FORDE: Yeah.
DAN WETZEL: Transfer four straight years.
PAT FORDE: I was fine with the one-time transfer exemption. First of all, you could already do it in every other sport, so why football, basketball? Had to be different. So I was fine with the one-time transfer and then you just say, no waivers, no nothing, sorry. Next time if you want to transfer, you have to sit out.
We are not gonna establish a committee to listen to your sob story about why you need to be immediately eligible or any of that. You're not even gonna be able to try making up a lie for why you need to play right away when you need to be back home, even though, really if you got like a sick relative, spend that time with the relative as opposed to practicing and playing.
However, now, yeah, we've got this proposal where apparently just transfer at will on an annual basis, which I think would be disastrous. We've already seen it. I mean, the one-time transfer rule has already been trampled. But if you just allow this completely wide open, that's free agency, that's a problem.
And it's a problem for everybody involved because like the players, your academics are going to be a disaster. And I know they've tried to set up academic progress and you have to be able to make these benchmarks to transfer to here and there at this point in time in your career, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're going to lose credits. You're going to have to change your major to try to fit in to something. The path of least resistance will be the only path that will be taken, academically.
I just think it would be a colossal, colossal mistake to go from where they were to all the way over on the other end of the spectrum of, yeah, just go wherever every year you want. Four out of four years, five out of five, different school, fine. I think that would be really bad.
DAN WETZEL: Look, this is basically travel sports now. And these players, these athletes, regardless of sport, have come up through travel sports. You sign for one year. If you like your team, you don't, other people start recruiting you in the middle of the year or you start looking at other schools. Now, you got the-- other teams, whatever. It's travel sports. One year, one and done.
This will be massive roster turnover every single year. And coaches put in a tough spot where playing time and decision-- everything's got to be appeasing. I did not-- I mean, I don't know.
Like, right now, Steve Sarkisian has a quarterback battle at Texas-- Quinn Ewers, Hudson Card, OK? Who's gonna be the starting quarterback? He knows Quinn Ewers is not going to leave.
PAT FORDE: Right.
DAN WETZEL: Because Quinn Ewers is already burned his transfer coming Ohio State to Texas. And so he can sit there and say, look, Quinn Ewers might be the QB of the future, but I got a little bit of time here. I can make this decision to best the team.
If he knows Quinn Ewers can leave again, that plays into it. It just-- it's just not a great way to run a sport. And I know that it's like player rights and all that, obviously, I'm pretty vocal on that. But there needs to be a balance to the product.
Everybody involved in this is benefiting from a good product. And letting the teams run them-- letting coaches run the team and teams sticking together for a little bit and all of that is a good thing for the product.