Should I stay or Should I go?
Many college athletes go through a dilemma of whether or not they should transfer from the current school that they are at,or try to start over somewhere else? If they were to take the risk of leaving the school to play somewhere else, they would face the penalty of having to sit out a year of competition. If a student athlete were to stay at the current school, they run the risk of being unhappy or might quit the sport that they are playing for good. I ask this question because many players nowadays are moving across the country to play for other schools that promise them immediate playing time, but each student athlete runs the risk of not being able to play competitive sports for a full year. Why? Why do student athletes have to face the punishment of having to sit out one year of competition? A coach can leave at any time to take a job somewhere else and faces no penalty of his or her actions so why can’t this be the case for student athletes.
Derryck Thornton
Derryck Thornton was a freshman point guard at Duke University that received some playing time during his freshman year of college. Now this player wants to transfer out of the Duke and continue his playing career somewhere else. His intentions of leaving Duke are to play basketball closer to his home state of California.1 This is a great reason to leave in my opinion, he is not leaving due to playing time or being upset with the coach, he is just home sick. So why punish a kid with a year off from competition because he is simply homesick? It is not right, he simply wants to move closer to his family and friends.
Chris Beard
Chris Beard has been in the news more this month than he has probably been in his whole life. Beard officially took a job at UNLV as the head basketball coach only to resign from that job after just TEN days of his official contract to leave for Texas Tech. When he was asked why he left UNLV he was quoted saying “when mama calls your home, you go home.”2 That might be one of the worst excuses of leaving a school to go to another school. If Beard were to stay at UNLV he would have the best recruiting advantage in the nation with his school being in Las Vegas, Nevada. Yet he leaves that school to now start recruiting to Lubbock, Texas which will be much harder to sell compared to recruiting to Las Vegas. He also won’t face any punishment for leaving early, in fact Texas Tech has to pay UNLV one million dollars buy out of his contract. That is amazing to me!
References
1 http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-the-dagger/duke-point-guard-derryck-thornton-intends-to-transfer-204257877.html;_ylt=AwrXnCUOMRZX2WoACuxNbK5_;_ylu=X3oDMTByNzdqbzZjBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMzBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--
2 http://sports.yahoo.com/news/chris-beard-says-bolted-unlv-come-home-texas-163532302--ncaab.html;_ylt=AwrXnCITNhZXITAAKMxNbK5_;_ylu=X3oDMTByNzdqbzZjBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMzBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--
This is a good, informative article. I appreciate that you address different angles of the issue and I do believe it varies on a case to case basis. Often I think it's dependent on the athlete's life outside of athletics and possible financial standings as well.
ReplyDeleteAll the time we see the athlete face punishment when a coach or other admin doesn't, for instance Penn State, the athletes ultimately are the ones suffering the NCAA's punishment. In my opinion you just have to hand it to the hypocrisy that is the NCAA, where the student athlete never comes first.
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