Moving violation

Players shouldn't have to pay for coaches' vagabond ways

It’s that time of year when college basketball coaches shed crocodile tears (see: Roy Williams) as they hustle away from a contract and jet off to their next sideline gig. College presidents and the NCAA should put a stop to this. Contracts should be honored on campuses, not whimsically blown off for a more appealing job.

And who gets the raw end of the deal? The players left behind and the incoming recruits.

Once a player signs a letter-of-intent, he can’t just follow a Williams from Kansas to North Carolina or a Dennis Felton from Western Kentucky to Georgia. He can’t just turn his back on Georgia, even if the coach he signed with, like Jim Harrick, is caught up in a scandal and shown the door. He has to get a release from the school he signed with -- which isn’t always a sure thing -- and then be prepared to sit out a year (two years if the release isn’t granted). Then he can appeal to the Collegiate Commissioners Association to have the year waived.

Those seeking to reform college athletics don’t overlook this sort of shabby treatment.

“It just underscores the plantation mentality they tend to have regarding the kids," says California state Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles), who is drafting legislation aimed at addressing some of the restrictions the NCAA places on athletes. “This letter-of-intent tends to bind this kid forever. The problem isn’t that the coaches get to move around, it is that the kids are stuck. And it is collusion among the (college) presidents because they make the kids stay there."

Nor is this solely the view of a Left Coast politician.

Listen to the mature, measured reasoning of William C. Friday, former president of North Carolina: “If and when you have movement like this, the student necessarily should not be bound to any prior commitment. It was a commitment to a coach, really, rather than an institution. I don’t think you should penalize young people like that."

College officials counter that when a prospect signs with a school and not a coach. But that’s nonsense, and anyone with an eye on the recruiting courtship knows it. It boils down to schools simply not wanting to absorb a double hit: losing both a coach and his recruiting haul.

“The point is everyone knows why the player’s there," says Friday, co-chair of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. “And everyone knows he came because of that particular coach."

So stop the silly little games.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for SI.com.

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