The NCAA Division I Cabinet approved emergency legislation Wednesday designed to stop programs from signing players who circumvent the transfer portal, but the coaches, general managers and attorneys who know the issue best are divided on whether the rules will hold.
As with most issues regarding player eligibility and movement in college sports, challenges may loom in the courtroom next fall.
The legislation approved Wednesday imposes severe penalties on programs that accept players who transfer without entering the portal: a half-season suspension for the head coach from all coaching, recruiting and administrative duties, and a fine equal to 20% of the school’s football budget.
“I am grateful the DI Cabinet approved the FBS Oversight Committee’s recommendation to impose significant penalties on head coaches and programs who circumvent transfer rules, along with immediate accountability,” Vanderbilt coach Clark said in a statement released by the NCAA. “This is a necessary step to address a critical roster management issue facing our sport and to protect the integrity of football’s transfer window.”
The idea behind the emergency legislation stemmed from the elimination of a second portal window in April, and rising fear that players would ignore the rules, unenroll from schools and go elsewhere after spring practices.
“It’s going to add legal chaos,” an AAC head coach told CBS Sports, “But it will keep rosters mostly intact — until one player wins a lawsuit.”
Eroding NCAA authority
That fear is grounded in reality. The courts have not been kind to the NCAA in recent years. Athletes have filed a wave of legal challenges at nearly every corner of the organization’s authority. Since the $2.8 billion House v. NCAA resolution, individual players have won injunctions forcing the NCAA to grant extra eligibility. The NCAA has won some of those cases, but the uncertainty alone carries enormous consequences about whether Wednesday’s legislation survives a court challenge.
Still, others believe the severity of the penalties is enough to change behavior.
“If they actually do it to somebody who violates it, absolutely, it’ll work,” one ACC head coach said.
Coaches doubt the rule will have teeth
However, cynicism and skepticism have seeped into the system following years of rulebreakers going unpunished and legal filings that have rendered the NCAA impotent in certain areas.
“There’s no way in hell any of this shit holds up,” an SEC head coach told CBS Sports. “If a kid gets kicked off a team, he can’t join another team?”
Indeed, such circumstances have already occurred in college football, and it’s believed those examples prompted the FBS Oversight Committee to implement new rules to slow coaches’ tampering within the system and to prevent players from attempting to circumvent the portal. Illinois‘ Bret Bielema Lea were the primary sponsors of the legislation, sources told CBS Sports.
Two high-profile moves outside the portal window last year exposed the NCAA’s structural gap, thereby helping two playoff-contending programs. Wisconsin defensive back Xavier Lucas was denied entry into the transfer portal and opted to unenroll from school before choosing to play for MIami. The Badgers sued the Hurricanes for tampering, arguing Lucas was under contract. Miami played him anyway, and the Hurricanes ran to the College Football Playoff national championship.
Last spring, BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff faced a seven-game suspension for an honor code violation after both portal windows had already closed, so he unenrolled from BYU, enrolled at Tulane as a walk-on and was eventually put on scholarship. He started for the Green Wave, throwing for 3,168 yards and 15 touchdowns while leading the program into the College Football Playoff. BYU had no recourse.
If both moves happened now, those schools would face significant penalties.
One Big Ten general manager still has doubts the NCAA’s new penalties will curb the behavior.
“Nothing even came of Xavier Lucas leaving for Miami last year — other than the fact he played for a national title,” he said. “There are no teeth right now. Until someone really gets hammered for something, no one is scared. If I’m a blue-blood program, what is there to be scared of? The NCAA is going to go for the low-hanging fruit and not the big boys.”
An SEC general manager echoed the concerns, pointing to staffing and logistical challenges at schools and within the NCAA’s enforcement unit.
“Legal chaos,” he said. “None of these rules hold any weight and are hard to enforce without constant audits, which nobody has the manpower to do effectively.”
Darren Heitner, the attorney who represented Lucas, believes court cases are on the horizon if the NCAA enforces penalties. Courts have repeatedly constrained the organization’s ability to restrict athlete movement and compensation. Most recently, Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss was granted a sixth year of eligibility in a Mississippi court. Virginia quarterback Chandler Morris is seeking similar relief.
Heitner believes the NCAA’s attempt to model roster control on NFL structures is misguided because the NFL’s legal protection flows from collective bargaining — a mechanism the NCAA has long resisted and lacks. The legislation, Heitner wrote in his newsletter last week, might buy the NCAA a few months of order as it heads into fall camp.
“But the moment a coach gets suspended or a school gets fined, expect the courtroom filings to begin,” he said. “And given the current judicial climate around college sports, I would not bet on the NCAA successfully defending these rules, at least not in their current form.”
What a court case might look like is also a fascinating question.
“The one thing I’m really interested in is who are they suing?” a Big 12 head coach said. “The whole deal is the penalty is not on the kid, the penalty is on the coach and the school. That’s what’s going to be really interesting.”
On paper, the legislation makes it catastrophically expensive for a program to use him, but it does not make the math impossible. Whether a program — particularly a blue-blood with resources and lawyers — decides those penalties are worth absorbing, and whether the NCAA has the will and manpower to catch them if they do, remains the central unanswered question.
The ‘tampering’ problem
The NCAA has yet to punish a power program on tampering allegations, even as coaches continue to point fingers and make accusations. Clemson‘s Dabo Swinney made the biggest swing this offseason, accusing Ole Miss coach Pete Golding of tampering with linebacker Luke Ferrelli, a former Cal player who enrolled at Clemson in January only to leave the program for Ole Miss days after the portal closed.
Swinney alleged Golding texted Ferrelli while he was sitting in an 8 a.m. class, asking about his buyout and sending a photo of a $1 million contract offer. Swinney submitted documentation to the NCAA and went public with the allegations in a 25-minute press conference. Golding has denied the characterization of events, saying the recruitment began before Ferrelli ever arrived in Clemson. The NCAA has not weighed in publicly.
The Big Ten sent a letter to the NCAA last month arguing that existing tampering rules “cannot be credibly or equitably enforced” and called for a moratorium on investigations while new rules are written.
“These rules were not designed for a world in which student-athletes are compensated market participants making annual decisions with significant economic consequences,” the conference’s letter read, according to ESPN. “The collision between the old rules and new reality is producing outcomes that harm the population that the rules were designed to protect.”
It’s going to take an act of Congress
Meanwhile, legislation that would fundamentally change college sports and rules enforcement — and potentially provide the NCAA and its membership legal protections ––was given a second wind last month in Washington, D.C. President Trump formed five committees last week, with dozens of collegiate and professional sports leaders tasked with providing suggestions to the President as Republicans continue to push the SCORE Act through Congress.
Wednesday’s vote to curb blind transfers is a narrow answer to a larger problem, and like so many NCAA rules before it, may ultimately be decided in a courtroom.
The Big Ten, in its letter to the NCAA last month, encapsulated the severity of the unknowns facing college sports.
“The system of college sports is under tremendous stress, both internally and externally,” the conference warned. “Systems adapt or they break.”
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