Oklahoma football: New transfer rule good for college football and Oklahoma

The new NCAA transfer rule is good for Oklahoma football and good for the game.

It has always come off as a little strange that college football gets unpaid players to sign legally-binding contracts while coaches are free to roam to wherever they wish.

This past June the NCAA took a step in the right direction when it comes to transfers by lifting the former “permission to contact” rule, which essentially allowed coaches to block players from leaving for certain schools.

One could only imagine the legal fight that would ensue if a coach was presented with a similar restriction. Say Nick Saban wanted to leave Alabama, but was told he couldn’t coach at any other SEC school or any team that had Alabama on its future schedule (a common restriction for players).

This rule obviously has coaches a little miffed, losing some power and potentially stability from their respective programs. Lincoln Riley himself came out with some words of warning to SBNation.

“I don’t know if we’re teaching the best lessons,” he told the site.

Riley is obviously worried about eroding depth as impatient players jump to another program rather than waiting for playing time, and yes this will occasionally happen (it already does). Look at a player like Abdul Adams, who led the Sooners in yards per attempt last year, but got shuffled down the depth chart late in the year. The Sooners just didn’t have enough carries to go around for three guys who could all start in most Power 5 backfields in Adams, Trey Sermon and Rodney Anderson. Now Adams will spend the rest of his career at Syracuse where he should get the carries he desired at Oklahoma.

This of course occurs every year. Guys like Ricky DeBerry, PJ Mbanasor, Justice Hansen, Trevor Knight and others were talented players who for some reason or other never quite fit in to what Oklahoma was doing. They all left to a myriad of willing suitors. Coaches not only expect this, they actually kind of count on it, routinely signing more players than they have scholarships to account for attrition. Transfer find their best fit.

Oklahoma has come out ahead when it comes to transfers over the past 5-10 years. Let’s take out the Baker Mayfield effect for a second, as Mayfield was a special case (he even has his own rule in the Big 12 rulebook because of it). The Sooners currently have a transfer quarterback competing for their starting job (and many say likely to win it) in Kyler Murray. Guys like Justin Brown, Jeff Badet, Geno Lewis and Jalen Saunders call came from other programs and became stars.

In the end “free agency” in college football isn’t going to usher in an era of mass chaos and high turnover as much as it will give players better options when they do decide to transfer. It prevents stories like Corey Sutton at Kansas State, who head coach Bill Snyder tried to block from transferring to 35 different schools in 2017.

Snyder is a legend and one of the greatest of all time, but he was clearly in the wrong on this issue, something for which he would later apologize to ESPN’s Jake Trotter.

Also, let’s also not forget this rule will not affect standing conference transfer guidelines. The Big 12, for instance, takes a year of eligibility away from any player who wishes to transfer within the conference. That means you aren’t likely to see Texas poaching players from Oklahoma’s roster or vice-versa any time soon.