Uthoff and The NCAA: Part 1

Uthoff Situation About The Wrongs of NCAA, Not Just UW

Since it became public knowledge that former UW men’s basketball player Jarrod Uthoff would be barred from transferring to some 25 D-1 schools as a condition of his scholarship release, there has been no shortage of outrage against the Badger program and specifically against head coach Bo Ryan. But if you take a step back and avoid allowing your emotions to guide your response, you quickly realize that this isn’t about Uthoff, Ryan, or even Wisconsin at all. It’s about a broken NCAA in dire need of reform.

Yes, per usual, it’s the rules that are at fault, not the actors subject to them.

Think about it this way: You come to Madison as a freshman and before you step foot on campus, you have already found a job working at Union South. You get there and start working, are on time and on task, but find after a few months that the job isn’t working out for you.

You could quit the job. You do have that option.

But lets say you have to work or you wont be able to afford school.

And there isn’t another job available.

So you keep working but in the mean time you spend some of your free time looking at other options. In the process, you come across a work study program at Indiana that would not only provide you with the funds necessary to stay in school, but also provide a job that is perfect and would work perfectly with your major.

You go and speak to your boss at Union South and tell them you are going to take the opportunity at Indiana next year. You offer to work the rest of the year and thank them for the opportunity but just as you are leaving your boss tells you….

We have restricted your release so you can’t go to Indiana. You are welcome to see if Purdue has a spot.

Wait, what?

This is absurd.

But this is exactly what the NCAA has set up for its precious “student athletes”. Pick a school while you are a senior in high school and sign away four years of your life to that school, whether you like it or not.

And it isn’t even a two way street. As Kentucky head coach John Calipari has demonstrated on more than one occasion, the schools themselves are not beholden to the restrictions placed on student athletes. If a player just doesn’t fit into the program anymore, they are thrown out into the cold. Scholarships are a one-year deal, renewable at the school’s option and the school’s only.

I dislike the growing “free agency” in college sports as much as anyone. In fact, my distain for it had blurred my ability to rationally think about the whole situation until now. In a perfect world, there would be no transfers.

But as a transfer student myself, I also realize that we do not live in a perfect world. I chose to attend UCLA while a bright-eyed high school senior, enticed by the allure of Southern California and the prestige that comes along with “being a Bruin”.

It took me a long freshman year to realize that wasn’t a good basis upon which to make a decision as important as where to go to college.

19-year-olds make mistakes and it is simply wrong for the NCAA to add fuel to the fire with transfer restrictions.

The other wrinkle in my own story is that I was technically an athletic transfer, subject to those same restrictions. Thankfully I had and continue to have a good report with the UCLA golf coaching staff, but had I done something to upset them prior to leaving the school (like I had done with the basketball program, another story)

Ultimately, as the NCAA loves to remind us, nearly all college basketball and football players will be “going pro in something other than sports”. If we are to take the NCAA at its word, then competitive considerations shouldn’t get in the way of a student-athlete’s future.