Timothy Davis, a law professor at Wake Forest University with an expertise in sports law, notes “we want to over-generalize about athletes and view with a very narrow lens the various factors that influence them to choose a particular institution.” Once recruits enroll, NCAA rules protect the interests of coaches understandably concerned with roster predictability and poaching by unscrupulous colleagues. If you can’t trust other professionals, you can at least keep them away from those under your control.
Davis agrees athletes do sometimes switch schools because they want more playing time or have problems with a coach or coaching change. However, the professor observes it’s equally likely an athlete is simply experiencing second thoughts about a decision made when 17 or 18 years old. “It could be the institution isn’t a good fit,” Davis says, “so these restrictions really inhibit the ability of student-athletes to transfer to schools that might be a better fit as far as the overall environment, apart from anything related to athletics.”
Reform, forced from without and within, is ostensibly the order of the day in the NCAA, particularly among the power conferences. If respecting athletes’ rights truly is part of the contemporary equation, it’s fair to let players transfer once, if only once, without restriction just like ordinary students. Punitive measures to regulate freedom should be the exception, not the rule.
Read more here:
http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/college/acc/article73517397.html#storylink=cpy
