from Amazon
Saturday, January 14, 2012
NCAA has a reserve clause?
Apparently they do:
There was one problem, however. Even though O’Brien was a bench warmer, Martelli, O’Brien said, was furious when he found out the player was leaving. As O’Brien later recounted to Sports Illustrated, when he told his coach that he was going to be attending Alabama-Birmingham for graduate school, Martelli responded with an expletive-laced tirade, vowing to block him from finishing his course work, and even threatening to sue him.
In a second meeting a few days later, according to O’Brien and his lawyer, Martelli told him that he would either “be playing at St. Joe’s next year or not playing anywhere.” O’Brien had already ascertained that there was no N.C.A.A. impediment to him playing for another school. It has a special rule for athletes like him — graduate students with remaining eligibility — allowing them to enroll in another university without having to sit out a year. The rule also states, though, that the player’s previous school has to agree to “release” him. St. Joe’s, clearly acting at Martelli’s behest, refused to sign the necessary paperwork.
Let’s put aside the question of why college athletes usually have to sit out a year when they transfer, even though coaches can switch schools at the drop of a hat. That’s a column for another day. Let’s focus instead on O’Brien’s plight. How can a student who has graduated from one institution be prevented from participating in an extracurricular activity at a different school? How can a miffed coach’s pique control the activities of a student who doesn’t even play for him anymore? Can a music teacher who is angry at a violin student prevent him from playing in another school’s orchestra? The very idea is absurd. Why is it any less absurd when the student is an athlete? Why is it any less wrong? Yet that is precisely what the N.C.A.A.’s rules make possible.
Glove-slap: Gabe.
It’s really hard to imagine how a school can have any rights over someone once it’s awarded him a degree. He’s now an alumnus, not a student. I’ll bet their development office is sending him appeals for contributions.
Per the article, St. Joe’s didn’t even offer a graduate program in the field he’s studying at UAB. What is he supposed to do, commute to practices and games (and at his own expense, of course, since anything else would be “extra benefits")? Only go to grad school near St. Joe’s, which assumes there were appropriate programs nearby and he could be accepted there and afford them? And that would be a bit more of a problem at, say, the University of Wyoming, which is nowhere near another school.
Two things really irk me here in particular. He’d only had the extra year of eligibility because he’d been forced by NCAA rules to sit out a year after he’d transferred to St. Joe’s in the first place. He apparently took advantage of the opportunity by being a full time student for a year, thus fulfilling his degree requirements in four years. I’d love to hear the justification for penalizing that behavior.
And finally, this is allegedly a religious school (although it seems more like a basketball program that is attached to a religious school from their behavior). How the religious authorities in charge of the school can tolerate a coach making a comment like that about any person, let alone a graduate, is beyond me.
What this is is another instance of the way the NCAA and its athletic programs seem to exist solely within their own universe, without reference to the real world outside.