September 25, 2004
Flag on the Play - Bad Idea Watch
I'm pretty much convinced that all the hurricane watches and warnings are causing people to do crazy things. Take for example...oh, I don't know...the NCAA rules committee. After this week's meetings, I'm convinced that someone has seriously spiked their water. There has to be some explanation for this crap. Whatever it is, I'm throwing a Flag on the Play.
Eligibility Changes
The NCAA rules committee sat down this week and came up with some doozies. Right out of the gate, they want to give players five years of eligibility. When you factor in the redshirts, medical redshirts, and hardship cases, it's quite possible that we'll see some players for six or seven years. For the love of God, people, Bobby Bowden will keel over & die if he has to endure another season of Chris Rix!
I'm convinced that this is a veiled attempt to back into improved graduation rates. If the NCAA wants to improve graduation rates, it could simply mandate that schools must pay for summer classes taken by scholarship athletes. Many schools do, but a surprising number do not. If the NCAA were truly interested in education, it would mandate the change, helping athletes work towards their degrees and academic standing. The fallout from a summer semester mandate is that it could chase some teams out of Division I. I'm OK with that - there are too many DI schools already.
Transfer Eligibility
The committee has recommended that the NCAA allow football, basketball and hockey players to transfer one time without having to sit out for a season. (They already can in most NCAA sports.) Whoa. This would be a dramatic shift and would create big-time chaos, especially in the mid-upper tier programs. It would absolutely devastate recruiting as we know it.
Changing transfer eligibility would be the college equivalent of free agency and would rock the game. Imagine if you will if LSU super-stud Skyler Green decided that he's got his championship ring with LSU, but --since Mike Williams is out at USC-- he's just going to move out to LA and go for another title with the Trojans. Or what if Purdue's Kyle Orton decides that Purdue is good, but not great. He jets off to Miami to bump Brock Berlin and lead the 'Canes to the promised land. If you think booster impropriety is bad now, just imagine if a player could be "brought over" to their school to play this fall.
12 game seasons
Will someone please explain to me why the NCAA is even debating this? Of course there should be a permanent exemption to permit 12 game seasons. Duh. Now get off this crap and start figuring out how to fix bad officiating in those games! Instant replay? Booth officials? Let's get something done. College football has a great record of legitimacy and it's placed in jeopardy if close games are decided by poor officiating.
Comments:
posted on September 25, 2004 12:03 PM — 68.62.114.241 — link — abuse?Pete Holiday said:
I don't think the 5-year eligibility is a result of trying to up graduation rates... the statistic that they use is already biased AGAINST graduation rates so the obvious first step to improving the rates, if that's what they wanted to do, would be to use a metric which actually measured graduation rate.
To that end, I think (unless they changed the statistic) that this would HURT "graduation rates" at schools because now EVERYONE can play football outside of the "allowed" period so I think the obvious result is that more players will not graduate within the allotted time.
posted on September 25, 2004 12:24 PM — link — abuse?
The argument to extend the eligibility simply because students are (supposedly) on campus longer doesn't make any sense. The two simply aren't related. Why not use the average years athletes are enrolled to calculate eligibility?
I agree, Pete, that something else could be done to improve graduation. I think actually applying scholarships for athletes that want to go to summer school is a good first step. I'm not saying that summer classes should be mandatory. I'm just saying that athletes shouldn't have to pay, like they do at many schools right now.
The graduation statistic (average 4.8 years for students) is a simple shell game to support the argument to extend the eligibility. More accurate statistics would lower that figure, as Ju-Cos are not counted now (they tend to graduate "on time"). Also, players that leave early are counted against the universities - that shouldn't happen.
Yeah, the 12 game thing is a total no-brainer. Just do it already. What I would like to see is more attention paid to obvious needs (eg fixing officiating).
Jeff said:
posted on September 26, 2004 6:45 PM — 24.197.122.162 — link — abuse?
From July 28:
The Atlantic Coast Conference has proposed adding a fifth year of eligibility for college football. The conference also suggested eliminating redshirt seasons while leaving the scholarship limit at 85. ACC officials feel that the proposal would cause more players to stay in school and finish their degree. It would be voted on no sooner than April of 2005.
posted on September 26, 2004 6:47 PM — link — abuse?
The ACC proposal isn't what the rules committee submitted. There is no mention of changing redshirt rules or reducing scholarships.
Ben Prather said:
posted on September 25, 2004 11:54 AM — 69.73.43.133 — link — abuse?I am going to disagree with the eligablity change and the 12 games change.
The eligibility change, from 4 years to 5 years, simply brings the game up to date with current trends. Today most students take 5 years to get their degrees. Speaking from experience, going to school year round can burn you out. Having summers off is important for many reasons, most importantly giving out of state students an opportunity to visit with the family they left to go to school.
As for the 12 game rule, more games played = more games to watch. Also, in the short term, it will make the scheduling eazier with all the conference changes. The Big 10 are the ones who go the ball rolling on this one.