Luke Ford....
- Thread starter mullin17
- Start date
Yes it appears his Grandfather is and he wants to be closer to him. That said if the NCAA starts breaking the rules where does it stop. If he wants to play he will need to go to a smaller school for a year then transfer or sit out a year.
I stopped being lazy, and yeah it's not his immediate family. No issue with their decision on this one.
I think the main issue here is inconsistency. Particularly the very quick and public approval of waivers for big name QBs (Fields and Martell) to big name blue blood programs (OSU and Miami). Looks really bad when everyone knows Martell and Fields transferred for starting QB jobs
Heck Justin Fields was at GA with Luke. Same team, same class, same coaches. Fields is a local GA kid whose sister is still at the school playing softball. He goes across the country to OSU and is approved.
It also seems bad for NCAA to want to sit themselves in middle of defining where to draw the line on “close enough” family member health since everyone is raised in diff situations. The 100 mile radius is completely arbitrary and discriminatory to anyone from a rural area (why not allow transfer into 1 of 2 nearest schools vs mileage?)
I also don’t understand how this isn’t just simple black and white. Either everyone sits a year (or 3 games or 6 games) or everyone gets 1 free pass. Why the NCAA wants a process that requires 19 year olds to hire high price lawyers to determine if they can play a sport at a school is non-sensical
Heck Justin Fields was at GA with Luke. Same team, same class, same coaches. Fields is a local GA kid whose sister is still at the school playing softball. He goes across the country to OSU and is approved.
It also seems bad for NCAA to want to sit themselves in middle of defining where to draw the line on “close enough” family member health since everyone is raised in diff situations. The 100 mile radius is completely arbitrary and discriminatory to anyone from a rural area (why not allow transfer into 1 of 2 nearest schools vs mileage?)
I also don’t understand how this isn’t just simple black and white. Either everyone sits a year (or 3 games or 6 games) or everyone gets 1 free pass. Why the NCAA wants a process that requires 19 year olds to hire high price lawyers to determine if they can play a sport at a school is non-sensical
Apparently Fields transfer was not based on a family members heath situation.
"During his limited freshman campaign, Fields was the subject of a racist comment from Georgia baseball player Adam Sasser. The comment was made during Georgia's win over Tennessee on Sept. 29, which gave the freshman QB and his attorney, Thomas Mars, grounds to make the case that Fields should be able to transfer without an eligibility penalty.
New NCAA transfer guidelines include a provision for undergraduate transfers which states that a player may not have to spend one year-in-residence before taking the field for their new team if "the transfer is due to documented mitigating circumstances that are outside the student-athlete’s control and directly impact the health, safety and well-being of the student-athlete.""
https://www.si.com/college-football...state-transfer-georgia-transfer-ncaa-decision
"During his limited freshman campaign, Fields was the subject of a racist comment from Georgia baseball player Adam Sasser. The comment was made during Georgia's win over Tennessee on Sept. 29, which gave the freshman QB and his attorney, Thomas Mars, grounds to make the case that Fields should be able to transfer without an eligibility penalty.
New NCAA transfer guidelines include a provision for undergraduate transfers which states that a player may not have to spend one year-in-residence before taking the field for their new team if "the transfer is due to documented mitigating circumstances that are outside the student-athlete’s control and directly impact the health, safety and well-being of the student-athlete.""
https://www.si.com/college-football...state-transfer-georgia-transfer-ncaa-decision
The ridiculous thing about Fields is that comment was apparently yelled from the stands. His sister is still at Georgia.
How one could argue well being around racism but then keep your other child at the university is beyond me. If the NCAA believes there is racism impacting athletes at GA not sure why their only action is to let Fields transfer and not address the situation
The inconsistency and subjectivity of it all is what is frustrating for someone like Ford. It is clear Fields went for a starting job. Ford was slotting in as a starter at GA but left to be near family. Surface level seems NCAA wants to avoid the race topic becoming public and lets the money/brand of big programs and players influence outcomes
How one could argue well being around racism but then keep your other child at the university is beyond me. If the NCAA believes there is racism impacting athletes at GA not sure why their only action is to let Fields transfer and not address the situation
The inconsistency and subjectivity of it all is what is frustrating for someone like Ford. It is clear Fields went for a starting job. Ford was slotting in as a starter at GA but left to be near family. Surface level seems NCAA wants to avoid the race topic becoming public and lets the money/brand of big programs and players influence outcomes
All about optics. A group of old white dudes (the NCAA) can't tell a black student that racism did not occur. Imagine that story on the news and online.
Ford is from Carterville, IL in extreme southern Illinois. If he were to transfer to a Power 5 school within 100 miles of Carterville, his options would be......none. The NCAA 100 mile transfer "rule" is biased for schools in or near large metro areas and against players from relatively remote rural areas.
Basically the NCAA needs a different rule for football than other sports because FBS has so few schools, and needs to include grandparents in the era of the extended family. If going to the nearest FBS school isn't good enough, any FBS football player from a state without a FBS program (Montana, Dakotas, Alaska) is screwed if the family medical issue like Ford's grandfather happens...If this was basketball, Carterville is just east of Carbondale & the Salukis could be getting a windfall - SEMO and Evansville would also be within 100 miles, but SIUE and Murray State would be just outside the circle by road (by air, really close...)
The NCAA should do the right thing and make everyone sit out a year regardless of circumstance. Leaving it up to interpretation is allowing people to game the system, does anyone really believe Fields would of left GA if he was going to start this year?
Does this apply to the coaches who move? Why not let people decide where they want to live and go to school without the strings attached? This limitation on movement is just another way the large institutions are exploiting these kids.
They can already do this if the don’t accept a scholarship, but they sign on the dotted line and enter into a contract so you play by the rules.
How do propose they navigate title 9 if they are able to unionize? You can’t pay football and basketball players and not pay women athletes.
@daveje
Wonderful! Indeed, this might be the greatest boon to women’s sports since Title IX itself.
If each new dollar of spending went equally to men and women, the system would function like a 100% payroll tax on male college athlete’s pay. If a star quarterback is worth $50,000 to a school, and they knew that for every dollar they spent on him, they would also need to allocate a dollar to women’s sports, then the most they could afford to offer him would be $25,000, knowing the other $25,000 had to go to meet their (theoretical) Title IX pay-equity burden. As every school would have this same tax burden, competition for those athletes would be fair, but muted...
So you aren't paying women athletes you are just increasing their budgets, where does this money come from without eliminating non-revenue men's sports?
Wonderful! Indeed, this might be the greatest boon to women’s sports since Title IX itself.
If each new dollar of spending went equally to men and women, the system would function like a 100% payroll tax on male college athlete’s pay. If a star quarterback is worth $50,000 to a school, and they knew that for every dollar they spent on him, they would also need to allocate a dollar to women’s sports, then the most they could afford to offer him would be $25,000, knowing the other $25,000 had to go to meet their (theoretical) Title IX pay-equity burden. As every school would have this same tax burden, competition for those athletes would be fair, but muted...
So you aren't paying women athletes you are just increasing their budgets, where does this money come from without eliminating non-revenue men's sports?
Why should football and basketball players be responsible for subsidizing golf and lacrosse? Perhaps they should justify their existence and find a way to support themselves. I played a non-rev sport at a school with one of these major men’s teams and we spent a lot of time fundraising and we probably should have done more. The idea that a basketball should have to sacrifice so I could play my sport is stupid.
And schools who raise student fees to pay for the football and basketball teams should have to drop the sport.