Kentucky has now added two graduate transfers in two seasons (Reid Travis and Nate Sestina), but those might be the last two.
According to reports, the NCAA is suddenly trying to shut down graduate transfers:
The graduate transfer rule, the rare N.C.A.A. regulation that gives leverage to the athlete, has been used by hundreds of players since it was relaxed in 2011. And at a moment when athletic admission graft, shoe company payola and questions about whether a transcendent (and unpaid) figure like Zion Williamson should even risk playing college basketball at all, the graduate transfer rule casts the beleaguered N.C.A.A. as reasonable and almost munificent.
It is also a rule that may not last much longer.
In two weeks, the N.C.A.A.’s primary legislative body, the Division I Council, will vote on a measure that could severely restrict graduate transfers. The proposed rule change would require that colleges accepting graduate transfers be docked a scholarship the next year if the transfer does not earn his secondary degree within a year.
So as graduate transfers have continued to increase — there were 124 this season in men’s basketball, according to the website GradTransferTracker, including a handful who were key contributors on N.C.A.A. tournament teams — and as programs have found value in them as a quick fix that suits both team and player, the new rule is seeking to discourage them by effectively adding a tax on programs that accept such players.
“That’s really draconian,” Rodney Fort, a sports economist and professor of sports management at the University of Michigan, said of the rule change. “This is like losing a scholarship from an N.C.A.A. penalty.”
The proposal, which could go into effect as soon as Aug. 1, would apply to only three sports — football, women’s basketball and men’s basketball — but appears particularly aimed at men’s basketball. Football teams, with 85 scholarships, are far more capable of coping with the loss of a single scholarship than a men’s basketball squad, which has 13. And there are roughly twice as many graduate transfers each year in men’s basketball as in women’s basketball.
