Rules to protect us from ourselves

We really couldn’t see this coming?

Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten, and one of those things was that rules are often in place to protect us from ourselves.

The NCAA continues to teach us that lesson, and the pace of its instruction is accelerating at epic levels. There was a reason the organization that oversees collegiate athletics slow-played the paying of athletes. It was a door someone knew had all kinds of trouble behind it.

Why? Because we have to be protected from ourselves. Sadly, for all the lessons I always thought we were teaching about teamwork we learn from sports, it turns out there is less of that than pure uninhibited, “What’s in it for me?”

Yes, the whole NCAA process is horribly designed right now, but when you have college coaches at postgame press conferences talking not about huge defensive stops or critical missed free throws, but about needing someone to stop them from adding “almost professional” players to their rosters, you know something is broken.

The hardest part for me is the absolute lack of professional courtesy from the so-called adults in the room, who then entice the young adults to follow suit.

I know we live in a day when giving two-weeks notice is considered extremely optional rather than an expected behavioral norm, but couldn’t we still pretend we care about someone other than ME.

Lane Kiffin decides to take a job as the head coach at LSU when his Mississippi team is in the middle of a playoff run and immediately announces he’s taking his coaching staff with him. What’s sure to follow is half of the roster.

The Ole Miss starting quarterback, Trinidad Chambliss, had to come out and actually announce he would use an extra year, if granted, to return to the school working overtime to get him that sixth year of eligibility instead of using it to follow Kiffin to LSU.

Kyle Whittingham steps down at Utah, allowing the coach-in-waiting to take over, but then takes the Michigan job. He immediately takes half the coaching staff with him and starts pulling other coaches from other staffs. And of course, players start following the coaches, leaving behind loyal teammates to pick up the pieces. There are college football teams who have lost more than 30 players to the transfer portal.

We wanted to pay the players without first addressing the fact that football and basketball fund all the other sports that do not generate that kind of revenue. The NCAA was always a co-op, but we wanted to pay the players, and someone thought that could be done modestly. Looks like someone was wrong. Most players don’t even finish the season with their current team. The term student-athlete is rapidly becoming a relic of the past.

We created professional athletes from what used to be considered amateurs. Certainly, I’m naive about these things, but in professional sports, athletes are bound by collective bargaining agreements and contracts. College athletes can just move from team to team every year with no recourse. Is there anything to stop a player from transferring immediately to be part of a playoff team?

I have no idea how to solve this. The door came crashing down once it was opened a crack, but I have one suggestion as a place to start. One rule that can add just a small amount of order to things and save these young people from themselves.

Coaches and players would be free to move from team to team, but if a coach jumps ship by his own choice, any of his players that choose to immediately follow him can do so but must sit out for one year. The player can transfer anywhere else and play immediately but must wait to play if he is being poached by a current coach.

The old rules about transfers are all out the window, and this would only put a small dent in the problem, but at least I’d feel like someone was doing something.