Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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UPON FURTHER REVIEW TODD D. BURLAGE into a Big Ten championship, a trip to the 2012 Rose Bowl and a third-round NFL Draft selection by the Seattle Se- ahawks. Notre Dame tight end Chase Houn- shell recently became the latest Irish player to leave school via the graduate transfer route (destination still to be de- termined), leading to the question as to whether the threat of this type of trans- fer on the back end of a college career might change the recruiting and coach- ing dynamics on the front end. For decades, high school recruits have listed immediate playing time among the most important factors when choosing a school. But moving forward, might the popularity of the graduate transfer option cause prep players to rethink those views and ex- press a desire to sit out their freshman season in order to preserve the protec- tion of perhaps playing elsewhere after graduation? Conversely, might college coaches change course and become more in- clined to use their freshmen to help exhaust any post-graduation eligibil- ity, thereby blocking players from leav- ing the program through this transfer method? This eligibility tug-a-war has coaches and conference administrators lining up on both sides of the graduate trans- fer issue. "What message does that send to his teammates that have been sweating and bleeding with him for three years?" Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby hy- pothetically asked CBS Sports to dem- onstrate his obvious disdain for this transfer option. "He gets a better offer and jumps ship. I'm not sure that's a great message to send to a group of teammates." Because nearly all of their student- athletes graduate in four years and deep rosters keep most players on the sidelines during their freshman sea- son, Notre Dame and Stanford are two of the most vulnerable football pro- grams in the country to losing players through graduate transfers. Both Irish head coach Brian Kelly and Stanford head coach David Shaw have brought in a few graduate trans- fers in recent years — Kelly landed Cody Riggs from Florida in 2014 and Avery Sebastian from Cal in 2015 — but both coaches have lost many more vet- eran players to this rule; annual roster depletions that Shaw said he expects and accepts. "They fulfilled their part, they got their undergraduate degree, they're college graduates," Shaw said. "If they want to use that fifth year somewhere else at a different program, I personally see no problem with that." And Shaw is right. During a time when college con- ferences and athletic programs are making billions off their kids with- out sharing the wealth, to provide a student-athlete a chance to further his academic and athletic pursuits at a dif- ferent school upon graduation should be considered an earned right, not a program problem. ✦ Todd D. Burlage has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2005. He can be reached at tburlage@blueandgold.com