He was on vacation in Germany, but that didn't stop David Ridpath from monitoring college transfer news back home.
Texas-Arlington was blocking basketball player Ericka Mattingly from transferring closer to her Wichita home, Pittsburgh was restricting graduate Cameron Johnson from playing basketball immediately at North Carolina, and Kansas State was refusing to grant Corey Sutton a release from his football scholarship. Ridpath couldn't look away, even on a different continent.
"It never stops," said Ridpath, an associate professor of sports administration at Ohio University who is also president of the Drake Group, a nonprofit organization that defends academic integrity from commercialized aspects of college sports. "Coaches have way, way too much power in this. Transfers will be the next battle in college athletes' rights."
As transfers become more prevalent in college athletics, so does the debate on how they should be governed.
Should student-athletes have the same freedom of movement as regular students? Should coaches have the power to block players from transferring to certain schools? Are graduate transfers good or bad?
These questions are being asked with greater frequency and earnestness, mostly because transfer numbers are on the rise with no decline in sight. Coaches have referred to the trend as an epidemic that makes it difficult to build and maintain rosters, but when they try to restrict players from leaving negative publicity follows.
Blocking transfers has become a bad look for coaches at the same time that gaining transfers has become as important as recruiting high school seniors.
