Oklahoma football: NCAA Announces changes to transfer, redshirt rules

The NCAA on Wednesday announced rules changes that will affect Oklahoma football players as well as student-athletes in other Sooner sports programs.

Student-athletes will no longer be required to request permission to transfer from their current school. The new rule, adopted by the NCAA Division I council, also prevents a school from blocking a transfer request.

There was no specific reference in the information released by the NCAA concerning whether a student athlete would still be required to sit out a year before regaining eligibility after transferring to another school.

Oklahoma football players Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray are the two most recent high-profile cases involving student-athlete transfers to OU. Mayfield’s transfer from Texas Tech was actually held up for a period of time by Red Raider head coach Kliff Kingsbury. Both players, however, were required to sit out a year before they were allowed to play at Oklahoma.

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The Sooner football program also has a recent history of graduate transfers (players who have obtained a degree at another school but still have a year of eligibility remaining and choose to play football at OU). Graduate transfers are allowed to play immediately. The Sooners have had graduate transfers play key contributing roles at the wide receiver position in recent years: Jeff Badet (last season, who transferred from Kentucky), Geno Lewis (in 2016, a transfer from Penn State) and Justin Brown (2012, another Penn State graduate transfer).

According to the information released by the NCAA, which was initially communicated via Twitter, student-athletes who desire to transfer will notify their current school of their intentions. The school will then have 48 hours to place the individual’s name in a national data base of student-athletes who have elected to transfer to another school. Once a student-athlete’s name is officially posted in the transfer data base, other coaches are permitted to contact the individual.

The NCAA also made changes regarding redshirts in football. Players will now be allowed to play in up to four games and still retain their redshirt status (meaning they preserve a year of athletic eligibility).

Both the new transfer and redshirt rules will go into effect on Oct. 15 of this year.