Tom Izzo delivered a rant recently against the prevalence of players in college basketball transferring, taking particular aim at a transfer loophole that more and more kids are taking advantage.
If an athlete has graduated but still has a year of eligibilty remaining (typically from a red shirt year), he or she is allowed to transfer to another school without sitting out for a year. The NCAA makes the allowance as a way to reward and encourage graduation, but Izzo and many others are concerned that it is leading to college coaches illegally recruiting players off of other teams.
"I don’t like that rule," said Izzo, who is nothing if not self-righteous. "I'm worried that for every one that there's really something for it, I'm worried that we're going to start recruiting people off people's campuses."
Funny that Tom Izzo would speak out against the senior transfer rule, because one of Izzo's starting guards last season, Brandon Wood, utilitzed the transfer exception to leave Valparaiso and transfer to Izzo's Michigan State team.
To be fair, Wood was the one who approached the Spartans, and Izzo did not initiate his recruitment (which would have been illegal, anyway). But the hypocrisy of Izzo's criticisms of the system he utilizes serves to highlight how difficult it is for any coach, even guys like Izzo who do try to run clean programs (whatever that means), not to become lyin', cheatin', thievin' d-bags.
"If I got one kid who is upset about his minutes and he transfers, I'm fine with it," Izzo said. "I'm perfect with it, because he's not going to win, OK? If it's my kid and you're seeing him in three years playing in junior high broom ball or something and he wants to transfer, you grab him by the back of the throat and tell that little SOB that, 'You know what, that's not the way it works.' Just because we've got some role models doing it, that's not the way it is." (Italics mine.)
Like I said, it's easy for these coaches to be total d-bags, even when they think they're just being decent.
"Why shouldn't these guys think like they think," Izzo went on. "Half of these kids we've recruited have been to three different high schools. Not satisfied here, move there. We've caused some of that. You've caused some of that, and so do we. So I'm taking the blame too."
Too much transferring is a big problem in college basketball. According to CBS Sports, more than 400 division 1 college basketball players have or plan to transfer this offseason - which means an average of more than one player from each of the 347 D-1 college basketball programs.
This epidemic has led a lot of coaches to vindictively restrict their players from leaving. We, along with every other sports media outlet, recently slammed Wisconsin basketball coach Bo Ryan for giving a transferring player a long list of schools he wasn't allowed to transfer to this winter.
But as terrible as it is for these athletes to be treated like a commodity and have their freedom restricted while they go unpaid, it is ultimately bad for the sport to have so many players transferring. It hurts team continuity, lowering the overall quality of play and making it nearly impossible to keep track of who the hell plays for who from year to year. It also throws off the education and graduation schedule for all these kids.
Izzo is correct when he admits, however indirectly, to being a major part of the problem. It's not unusual for high school kids to transfer a couple times in order to get better exposure for college coaches. Then they get to college and they transfer because they want better exposure for professional scouts.
It's a considerable problem with no real solution, because the systemic shortcomings in this area of college basketball are so deep. One solution would be for guys like Tom Izzo to become less single-minded and neurotic, but I'm trying to stay realistic here.
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