The NCAA will allow first-time transfers to be immediately eligible beginning this year

First, the news:

There are some limitations to how this will work, but the long and short of it is that the vast bulk of transfers will be able to play immediately rather than having to sit a year before suiting up for their new teams. The D1 Council has voted to adopt the rule and the Board of Directors will vote on April 28th on ratifying it.

This rule will allow any player who has not transferred before and who is hitting certain markers on academics to transfer without having to sit a year. Rather than being groundbreaking, all this legislation does is bring basketball, baseball, football, and men's ice hockey into line with every other D1 sport.

That's right, if you competed in archery or swimming or any of the other 24 NCAA D1 sports not listed above, you already had the option to transfer without sitting out a year. If you recognize the above-listed sports as main drivers of revenue for D1, no flies on you. If you find it a little cynical that they were the only ones with transfer restrictions, well... I don't know what to tell you. Probably just a coincidence.

Anyway, student-athletes in fall and winter sports will have until May 1 to decide to transfer and those in spring sports will have until July 1, though for this year only, everyone will get the July 1 deadline.

If you're opposed to this, you're wrong. I don't know what else to tell you. I hold college credits from two different schools. Brad holds credits from at least four that I can think of, and probably more since this was just a hobby of his for a while. None of the schools we left were bad or wrong, they were just what we thought the right fit was for a certain time, then not the right anymore after that.

This isn't about kids not wanting to put in the work or a spoiled generation not being willing to defer gratification. Anyone who has made the D1 level in sports has put in work and deferred gratification beyond what their peers have been asked to do; nobody fell out of bed one day with the skills to land a scholarship offer from any school listed on the KenPom. Every one of these players has been on a grind. Anybody feeding you the line about spoiled, lazy kids is doing it to keep power consolidated with the people not on the court; anyone buying that line is, at best, misinformed.

Recruiting is as inexact a science as can be imagined. Sometimes a dude starts at the D3 level and winds up splashing threes for the Heat. Other times a top-100 guy ends up at an NAIA school (not that there is any shame in that).

There is value in recognizing when a fit isn't right, either in admitting defeat or chasing a new challenge. A player shouldn't be penalized for that. Allowing players to choose where they play is a step in the right direction.