but less so when players have broken team rules or whatnot. And how do you resolve that anyway? What are the terms under which a player can be kicked off a team? There comes NCAA discretion creeping in through the back door again.
I would say that just because a player broke team rules, doesn’t mean they will transfer. In fact, the fear of losing a year of eligibility COULD get them to stay, take their punishment, and learn from the experience as opposed to running. Which is a good thing...if it happens.
Regarding players kicked off the team for a violation of team rules, I’d say the same thing applies. If there is no chance for reconciliation, and the offense was egregious or repetitive enough, you have to use a year to go to a new school.
It isn’t perfect, and definitely opens things up for “less than honest” coaches to simply “find” infractions to kick kids off a team whereas normally they wouldn’t care as long as that player performs well...but hopefully that would be few and far between.
But I just think in general that looking at the college landscape and diagnosing the issue as a surplus of player power, and players needing to have rules and punishments imposed on them to limit their choices isn't the way I would look at it. They have the short end of the stick as it is.
I’m definitely not one who thinks the players have all the power. It is definitely slanted towards the schools/coaches/NCAA. However, it honestly should be slanted, at least a little bit, towards the adults with 30+ years experience and not the students who JUST got out of high school. Maybe 60/40?
Big time decisions that affect large scale organizations and involve millions/billions of dollars shouldn’t be in the hands of the our newest adults. Sure, a few may be responsible enough to make good decisions, but the vast majority are not yet ready. I mean, 99.9% of them don’t choose Illinois when they are recruited so we know they have sub-par decision making skills.:thumb:
But if we absolutely wanted to make sure the schools had to pay a little more to even things out, I would say that you make immediately eligible transfers cost 2 scholarships in the same year. So a rising sophomore that enters the portal, with 3 years to play 3 (since he is giving up his extra year in the system I’ve proposed), could get contacted by a school. If a school wants him to play next year, no questions asked, they have to apply two scholarships to him. And then one for each year after that.
So instead of that player taking up 4 scholarship years in 4 calendar years (redshirt and 3 to play) he uses up 4 scholarship years in 3 but negatively impacts the schools numbers for the first year.
Just spit-ballin.