Graduate Transfers Aren't Ruining NCAA Basketball, No Matter What Coaches Say

The National Collegiate Athletic Association writes many dumb rules. Case in point, campus athletes usually have to sit out for a year when they transfer between schools. No one should be penalized for switching schools in order to pursue a better fit or opportunity—coaches, professors, athletic administrators and other students certainly aren't.

The NCAA does, however, allow graduate transfers—those athletes who have graduated and have athletic eligibility remaining—to compete immediately after they switch schools. This is a good thing. If you're continuing your higher education and want to play college sports just a little bit longer—and we assume, like the NCAA always claims, that both of those things worth far more than any paycheck—then who would object to that?

As it turns out, lots of people! Especially college coaches, many of whom complain about graduate transfers while aggressively recruiting them. Coaches don't like the extra work that goes into keeping players happy for four or five years, and they really don't like the fact that, in this one isolated instance, they don't have total control over athletes. So they gripe and grumble.

There are a lot of myths out there about graduate transfers, and a lot of them are rooted in the above whining. If you're interested in reality, here's a handy guide to the worst of them:

One of the biggest claims by the anti-graduate-transfer crowd is that the rule is simply way for talented athletes from mid-major schools to jump to bigger programs. Here's Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski suggesting just that:

"The one-and-done with the fifth-year graduate player is what is the main story for college basketball," he said. "There are many, many more of those. And that's hurt a lot of our mid-major programs when these kids leave and go. Many, many more."

As mentioned above, there's absolutely nothing wrong with someone wanting a better opportunity. That's what America is supposedly all about—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You should be able to pursue a life, in college and in your basketball career, that makes you happiest. Nobody complained when Krzyzewski for left Army for Duke, and he was arguably hurting the competitive chances of the United States military. Sad!

Even if graduate transfers moving from mid-majors to power schools was some sort of immoral act, the truth is that it doesn't happen a whole lot. Of the 89 graduate transfers in 2015, only 27 percent of them actually took a jump up. Most went to equal or worse programs.

The main reasons players transfer after graduating are: 1) a lack of playing time, and 2) their previous coach essentially forced them to leave. Michigan transfer Max Bielfeldt, for example, went to Indiana because the Wolverines literally would not take him back.

There are times when athletes choose to use the graduate transfer rule to better their basketball careers—again, there's nothing wrong with that—but that's not what usually happens. The rule certainly isn't decimating the mid-major talent. Krzyzewski and others are ignoring the postgame stat sheet, and just making things up.

The graduate transfer rule exists so that athletes can receive a graduate education elsewhere, just like many non-athletes do, but often the rule isn't utilized that way. Less than a third of graduate transfers actually get graduate degrees.

This is a very bad thing, says Purdue coach Matt Painter.

"They're making their moves, a majority of them, for basketball reasons," he said. "What the rule is intended for, it's not happening most of the time."

In a narrow sense, Painter is right. Many players are putting sports ahead of academics, just as they do as undergraduates. But where would they get such an idea?

Let's ask former graduate transfer Johnny Hill why he chose Purdue.

"The biggest thing for me was to make the tournament," Hill said. "They're obviously at that level."

Ironically, Purdue's last four graduate transfers have all majored in the same program, called "Leadership and Technology." Coincidentally, this program allows for maximum basketball time.

"I like it, too, because they only meet for three weekends a semester," new Purdue graduate transfer Spike Albrecht said. "I'm going to be pretty much doing my own thing during the week, working on my game, finishing up assignments, but that's right up my alley."

So yes, many graduate transfers are leaving for non-academic reasons—but let's remember that at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, schools aren't recruiting them for academic reasons, either. Getting rid of the graduate transfer rule would end up punishing athletes who do leave for academic reasons, all because whiny coaches just can't keep themselves from recruiting good basketball players, which is the whole reason schools pay millions of dollars to those coaches in the first place. And that wouldn't make sense.

In the real world, you have to honor your commitments! That's why you sign contracts! Turn on sports radio, and you're likely to hear this argument deployed against graduate transfers. It sounds satisfying, in a Radio Tough Guy sort of way, but also ignores basic reality. College athletes actually do sign contracts, in the form of financial aid agreements. Those agreements are either for one or four years.

That means the universities and athletes are usually renegotiating contracts every year. A few schools offer four-year scholarships, but most graduate transfers have graduated in four years and have an extra year of athletic eligibility available due to redshirting earlier in their career.

So virtually every graduate transfer has fulfilled their obligations under their contracts. Many of them, like Bielfeldt at Michigan, leave because their previous employer school walked away from renewing or extending the deal.

Everybody owes each other what they agreed to in their contract, nothing more.

Free agency was a breakthrough for professional athletes' rights, and while it was initially reviled by their coaches and franchise owners, it is now regarded as a fair and necessary part of the business.

However, Northwestern coach Chris Collins is not happy about bringing free agency to college basketball. "It's a vicious cycle," he said about what some coaches are calling a transfer "epidemic." "Where we're headed is ultimately free agency, and that's not a good thing."

Collins isn't exactly morally opposed to graduate transfers, as he has brought two of them to the Wildcats in three years. And as I already noted, most graduate transfers aren't shopping around for top offers—most have few choices or have been kicked off their teams.

Even so, college basketball already has free agency—it's called recruiting.

There is no difference between Collins recruiting high schoolers and chasing after graduate transfers, which he does quite frequently. Neither is contractually obligated to a school for the next season, so coaches and players both search for the best fit. The sport has always had "free agents," and it's not a big deal. Coaches who spend lots of time pursuing them—and shopping their own services to the highest bidder via actual agents—shouldn't pretend otherwise.

From the latest edition of Grown Men Yelling At Clouds Quarterly, here is CBS Sports' Jon Rothstein complaining about transfers, AAU basketball, and probably the decline and fall of the American Republic:

Fighting through adversity and building calluses through life experience is something that's a thing of the past and that's reiterated by the way players change programs at the grassroots level prior to ever stepping foot on a college campus.

"Adversity" is dumb word. It is usually used by people to tell others, whose situations they know nothing about, that they should actually do what is worse for themselves because doing what is best for themselves is bad. This is stupid logic, and no way to live your life.

Good rule of thumb: Do what you like, and don't do what you don't like just because some person you don't know wants you to have some calluses or something.

All that aside, graduate transfers have nothing to do with adversity. By definition, they have graduated from school, meaning they spent at least three years at their previous school, fighting for playing time and through whatever "adversity" was sent their way. They aren't leaving because they took the first opportunity to get out—that would be quitting—but rather because years of experience have helped them figure out their best option.

If college basketball is being ruined by graduate transfers, you sure wouldn't know it from looking at the salaries of the coaches bitching about them.

Look, no matter what you think about graduate transfers, the NCAA is absolutely not going to do anything about them. The association is currently being sued by about a million different people, mostly because its rules governing players are way too restrictive—something courts have decided on multiple occasions.

As such, it's foolish to ask the NCAA to make its rules more restrictive still. So perhaps coaches and everyone else should pipe down. Graduate transfers are here to stay, and by the logic of some critics perhaps that ought to be celebrated: at least it gives those same grumblers a chance to fight through adversity, which is just what they always say they want.