College Coaches Who Refuse to Release Athletes

compliance wrote:

And what if he gets there and finds school C is a national championship team, should he be released again?

Your lack of knowledge about NCAA transfer rules pretty much kills your arguments, bud.

no, bud, you are mistaken. i know the rules, and i know they can't be released a second time under current rules. my point was that someone used freedom of choice as their argument. so i posed a hypothetical. some on here are proponents of allowing athletes to transfer at their own discression un-governed. try to follow along closely.

kartelite wrote:

compliance wrote:

And what if he gets there and finds school C is a national championship team, should he be released again?

Your lack of knowledge about NCAA transfer rules pretty much kills your arguments, bud.

His knowledge and quoting of the NCAA rules is what makes his point. It is not an "argument" or an opinion. Everyone can have their opinion. But he is not stating opinion he is stating the fact.

You really can't disagree with him. You may not like the rules and want them changed (that is anyone's prerogative), but that is not what "compliance" is saying. He is stating the rules.

No, the "rules" are not under debate. They are what they are. The question pertains to what coaches should do, and when if ever they should refuse to release an athlete.

A good point was made that a coach can cut an athlete or sever his scholarship at any point, why shouldn't the athlete have the same option?

And most athletes probably have other considerations when transferring, why should a coach screw over an athlete who is transferring for academic or personal reasons?

If the student athlete's academic career is priority number one (which it should be) and they are transferring for academic reasons, then go ahead and transfer regardless of getting the exception. I would think not being able to compete for a year is a whole lot more preferrable to being stuck in an academic program and career not suited for you if you really are serious about your academic pursuits. If athletic pursuits really are that distant of a priority, then one year out of competition shouldn't be that big of a deal. If you don't want your college years governed by the NCAA, then don't accept the scholarship that many others never have the opportunity for. Easy as that.

no a coach can't cut an athlete's scholarship at any point. which makes what you call a good point, actually a bad point. to quote you, your lack of knowledge of ncaa rules basically ruins your arguments, bud.

A coach can remove a scholarship during the term of the award for:

1. the athlete rendering himself ineligible for ncaa competition (grades, failed drug tests etc)

2. fradulent mis representation-i.e. knowingly committing fraud with ncaa documents, or making only token appearances at mandatory practices competitions etc

3. serious misconduct as determined by univesity administration

4. voluntarily withdraws from sport.

that is the only way a coach can take a scholarship during the term of its award which is one year, renewable.

the fact that you call it screwing over shows your bias.

would it not also be screwing over if an athlete waits until late summer to inform a coach of their intent to transfer? would that not be harmful to the program? therefore the rule is in place to protect against such instances among other things. and the athlete has recourse if they feel otherwise.

So the athlete, again, is protected for that term, one year. At the end of which, the coach and athlete should MUTUALLY come to an agreement wether the athlete will return the next year and for how much scholarship!

As a fix to many of these issues (but possibly causing others), scholarships should be awarded for a term of 'until degree completion, no longer than 5 years'.

this would give the athlete as much protection as the coach/institution has

dummy wrote:

this would give the athlete as much protection as the coach/institution has

Most coaches are only on 1 year contracts, so they don't have that much more "protection" than a student-athlete has. They may have more options, but not that much more protection.

If an athlete is denied his/her full complete release there are a number of steps in the appeal process. Most times those steps (after the first couple of steps) are outside of the Athletic Department - like the Faculty Senate and/or University Appeals Committee. Most of the cases I have seen, unless there are strict policies which have been breached the Faculty side with the student and not with the coach. The s-a may have to sweat out the process and do some work, but unless they have done something wrong or malicious, they win.

On most campuses the Faculty are liberal and will side with the student, but even then if the student-athlete loses, they can still appeal to the NCAA or even sue and fight it in court. This has been done, but ususally despite what is being said by the s-a, if they follow the procedures they get a full release and if they don't follow the procedures they don't (not always - usually).

Bump.

I was hoping APR would answer my question. I find his/her opinion interesting and I wanted to hear what he/she has to say as a follow-up on this topic.

To "APR" -

In your mind, is there any possible situation where a student-athlete at his or her request should not be given a full and complete release to transfer whereever they want to go?

Do you feel that the one-time transfer policy should not be limited, but they should be able to transfer as often as their eligibility allows?

It seems to me that only about three people on this thread know what they are talking about. Even if a school does not grant the "one time transfer exception" and a SA does not win the appeal, they can still transfer to another school and be on athletic scholarship during the transition year. The catch is they can't compete. Therefore they do not get stuck financially. Some of you fail to understand that some track & field coaches jobs do actually depend on their programs performance. If they don't win they will be out of a job. So when a SA transfers, especially at the last minute, it also hurts them. It seems like one DI coach on here is at a school where they could care less if the team wins or not or he/she is not very competitive at all as a coach.

APR is not going to answer you because he doesn't know what he's talking about.

kartelite wrote:

A good point was made that a coach can cut an athlete or sever his scholarship at any point, why shouldn't the athlete have the same option?

The trouble is the point is wrong. If you actually knew the rules you would know that a coach can't cut a scholarship anytime they want and for just any reason they want, especially performance. That is spelled out very clearly by the NCAA.

The other thing is the academics. I always find it funny that this comes up. A general student can receive a scholarship for their high school academic performance and once in college have it cut because they perform below the standard (typically 3.0). No one out there blames it on the professors. Yet, a recruit that runs 4:10 in high school, receives a full scholarship then decides to party it up in college and only musters 4:20 can't be held financially accountable by the coach or school. In most cases that I've heard of this happening the athlete and his friends blame the coach for the poor performance. The result is the recruiting for the school suffers. The NCAA protects the student-athlete way more than the coach and school. Too bad some of you are way too misinformed to get it.

yea, well my stupid coach kicked me off the team because i got a dui one weekend. we didn't even have meet that weekend and he pulled my scholarship. don't tell me coaches can't pull your scholarship.

In all this discussion, it's useful to remember that the NCAA is a creation of the colleges. The NCAA's rules match the desires of (a majority of) its member colleges.

I'd really like to print this thread and send it to a coach I know quite well...

I think in certain situation the ncaa grants too much power to a coach...

In this sketchy situation, the coach told a member of the team (his number 1 runner at conference and regionals) to either get serious, or be forced to quit. he never said he'd kick the athlete off, he just told him to leave. when the athlete was told this, he looked elsewhere and even asked the coach to release him to run somewhere else - since in fact the coach would force him to quit either way. the coach refused - and later threatened to take the athletes scholarship away if he didn't get serious. so this basically left the athlete with two options: quit and run nowhere. or give your all for an a$$hole coach.

another situation with the SAME coach...

he got a kenyan who had apparently run some stellar times. when the kenyan showed up and was running 10 minutes for 2 miles, the coach wasn't too pissed (and treated him like $hit). after one semester the kenyan had his scholarship taken away, and had to drop out of school due to low funds... sure this goes along the line of misrepresntation - though the kenyan himself had no idea his times had been lied about from his pervious coach in kenya (who did so to get him into an american university).

it's situations like that where the ncaa can grant a coach too much power. this coach OBVIOUSLY abuses that power, though in humorous irony his team has consistantly been at the back of it's conference year after year ever since he's taken over the distance program...

wrong they do not recieve aid if they arent released...they can only recieve athletic aid if it was a release. BB FB may be different

to add to my previous post... i might add the reasoning behind the friction between the first athlete and the coach.

the coach attempted to accuse his athlete for his teams last place performance at the conference meet (when in fact the athlete was his #1 runner by far that day - as well as many others). He then went to accuse his athlete for the teams inability to pull in new high school talent. when in reality the athlete has nothing to do with either situation.

when trying to find reasoning behind the coaches accusations, you'll find that another member of the team (one member - who easily played the role of the Coaches Baby; a hard worker but not very talented) decided to have a problem with the fact the the #1 runner was a low mileage runner (whereas the One memeber guy was a high mileage guy with zero results). the high mileage guy complained to the coach, stating the the #1 runners lack of "hard work" (i.e. 100+ mpw) effected the entire team. in a stupid decision, the coach has to look for some reason on why his team was (and has been) last in recent years - so he goes and finds someone to blame for his teams failures.

i'm sorry - but that made me laugh. a teams overall performance is a sole reflection upon THE COACH. not one athlete.

Another funny thing is this is happening at a fairly large DIVISION 1 university!

I got a question, What if you are on athlete who is not on scholrship, but have times good enough to go elsewhere. If youve been cleread by the NCAA, will you not be penalized a year?