This happens to be Basketball, but the prior issue was with Randy Edsall and the Maryland football team.
The issue is, IIUC, a student athlete who transfers must sit out the first year at the new university, UNLESS the former university, via paperwork filed by the coach, allows an exception for a particular school.
The way this normal works is that the coach says an exception is OK, EXCEPT for a list of named schools.
NOTE: This is for eligibility reasons only, it is NOT restricted to those athletes on scholarship to the best of my knowledge.
Prior to actual transfer, the player wants to talk to the coaching staff of the possible schools. Believe it or not, this contact is not permitted unless explicity granted by the Coach/School.
Bo Ryan, Mens Basketball coach at Wisconsin, is blocking Jarrod Uthoff discussing this with all other Big 10, ACC and Marquette and Iowa State. Iowa State is the hometown team for the player and Marquette is a team in proximity to Wisconsin. Big 10 and ACC have a program of playing each other (1 game per season) for the next several years.
Jarrod submitted a list of 25 schools to the Coach and the Coach blocked the above teams which constitute more than half the 25.
Ryan was on Mike and Mike this morning, and although initially persuasive, dug his hole deeper by the end.
Ryan gave the following reasons for his action:
1) There is an appeal process which the student can appeal the coaches blocks. The appeal is handled by an administrator, not the coach. Ryan framed the appeal as simple and easy and probable of acceptance in this case.
2) He had almost no experience with Transfers and inquired of other coaches what to do. He states that his actions were what every other coach counselled and is the accepted practice.
When asked why block anything, his response was: it allows the student to explain his reasoning for particular schools during the appeal process and that it is common practice.
If you listen to the interview Ryan alludes to "responsibility to the university".... but never concludes his thread. I believe that essentially Ryan believes that a team has an investment in a student and as such has a fudiciary responsiblity to using the blocking mechanism to force justification by the student. I think most coaches do.
But he was smart enough never to actually say that.
The die is cast. We are going to hear more and more of these blocking stories. Fundamentally because no one wants to discuss the underlying reason for the rule in the first place, which is to limit player mobility to make it easier on the coach.
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Originally Posted by Pruitt
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