Once more, there is loud talk from coaches, administrator and conferences of eliminating the Graduate Transfer as we know it.

Start with the basics. Graduate Transfer Exception (or Waiver):

The graduate exception is a version of the one-time transfer exception. It is for student-athletes who cannot use the normal one-time transfer exception because they play one of the sports that are not permitted to use the exception.

The student-athlete must have graduated with at least a bachelor’s degree;
The student-athlete meets the other requirements of the one-time transfer exception;
The student-athlete must have at least one season of competition left; and
The student-athlete’s previous school did not renew his or her athletic scholarship or offer an athletic scholarship for the following academic year.

The requirement that the scholarship be cancelled or not renewed is generally not an issue. The scholarship does not need to be cancelled before the transfer or be the reason for the transfer. Because the one-time transfer exception requires you to get a release, what will happen with your scholarship is generally just an administrative detail.

The Graduate Transfer Waiver is often conflated with the exception because they are so similar. There is one key difference.

The graduate transfer waiver is now typically used by athletes who have previous transferred once before and so cannot use the one-time transfer exception (even as a graduate student).

A letter from the previous school saying it does not object to the student-athlete being eligible;

Documentation that the student-athlete has been accepted into a specific graduate degree program;

Documentation about whether that degree program is offered by the previous school;
A student-athlete statement including the reasons for the transfer; and

A statement from the previous institution about the student-athlete’s status on the team.

[Emphasis added.]

Unlike regular transfers, there is no requirement to sit out a year after transferring. The player is eligible to play right away. That is the big bonus for both the player and the school to where he transfers.

Let’s get this out of the way immediately. Pitt is absolutely benefiting from this rule… this year. Pitt’s (likely) back-up QB, Nathan Peterman. The basketball team has added two players by way of the graduate transfer exception for the upcoming season in Rafael Maia and Sterling Smith. There is the possibility of a third via the graduate transfer exception in Sterling Gibbs.

So biases may be in play, but I’ve written before about the graduate transfer rule. How it is a good thing, even before Pitt had utilized it.

Despite grousing and desires to change it from the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), the rule seemed safe. The impact of graduate transfers had been relatively minimal.

Players may have been pursued arduously — and greater than their talent and impact would suggest. That, however, had (and still does have) as much to do with their low risk/high reward potential. A one year player who at worst helps depth. Only DeAndre Kane comes to mind as a grad transfer who really shined as a star after transferring that way in basketball.

(Seriously. I’m optimistic about Sterling Smith and hopeful that Maia can at least provide some depth. But the interest both those players received from major conference programs far outstripped what they accomplished at their former schools. If they transferred in a traditional way with being required to sit a year — and tie up a scholarship for two years — you can bet the interest would have dipped significantly.)

That is until Oregon “poached” QB Vernon Adams from Eastern Washington as a grad transfer. Vernon Adams had developed from a marginal talent to the Big Sky Offensive Player of the Year, FCS All-American and runner up for the Walter Payton Award, which is given to the best FCS player nationally.

But at only 6-0 and playing at Eastern Washington, he would face a lot of questions and skepticism about being able to play in the NFL. Playing at the 1-A level for a power conference team would help answer some of the questions, significantly increase awareness of him and potentially raise his earning potential via where he would get drafted.

Adams earned his degree in only three years and made it known he would be looking to go to a major conference program. Oregon, UCLA and Texas were among the programs that came calling.

That decision by Adams to take some measure of control of his future shook a lot of forces in college athletics. Suddenly a relatively minor transfer exception/waiver took on an outsized place in the issues and problems in college athletics.

The handwringing at players being poached. Drexel coach Bruiser Flint lost a star player to Louisville this spring and articulated the coaches’ position.

“The thing is, you develop a kid and all of a sudden he’s going somewhere else,” Flint said. “He wants to go to play at a higher level, but he went to Drexel for a reason — because he wasn’t recruited at that level. He wasn’t a player at that level. Now he is, but we helped him get there and now that he is, he’s out.”

If I was a Drexel fan I would be pissed too about losing a good player.  And certainly the coaches play a role in developing the player. But to discount the player’s own hard work and contributions in the previous seasons — and fulfilling the student part of the student-athlete — and act like you have an ownership interest in the player just shows what the real issue is for coaches.

Plus, the coaches know, it is because they can’t really trust their peers.

“You know how coaches work. We’re all thieves,” Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said with a laugh. “We will find the edge.”

The edge here is investigating, if not downright recruiting, players with ties to other programs.

It’s not supposed to happen.

It happens.

“The reason we’re addressing it is because our integrity is so bad, we’re recruiting each other’s players,” Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin said. “It’s a sad indictment of our game. But it’s also bad when there are lists flying around during the season that says who redshirted when or transferred early in their career and is now a good player who would be able to do this. And that is absolutely going on.”

Insane recruiting restrictions — think the old text messaging restrictions — did not come about in a vacuum. They came about because the coaches themselves demanded it. Protect us from ourselves — and then give us cover to complain about the dumb rules when we run afoul of them.

Naturally, even the coaches can’t couch a change to the rule that way. No it has to really be about the student athlete. Text messaging was regulated as for the benefit of the kids so that they would be able to have some respite from coaches recruiting and bothering them. Or running up their bills with too many texts.

The desire to make the graduate transfer like the regular transfer — subject to being forced to sit out a year — is being couched in a similar way.

This is about making sure the student athletes — the same ones who earned their undergrad degree in four or even three years — actually complete their graduate school coursework. Grad school typically takes two years, so only being in school for one year makes it seem like a sham. Why, look at the numbers.

According to the NCAA, only 24 percent of the graduate transfers in football and 32 percent of those in men’s basketball had earned a graduate degree two years after they transferred. The graduate degree numbers are higher for graduate transfers in other men’s sports (40 percent), women’s basketball (47 percent) and other women’s sports (66 percent).

Nearly 40 percent of the football graduate transfers leave at the end of their first graduate term. They typically withdraw when their playing eligibility ends. At this point, it’s worth remembering these players have already graduated and fulfilled the stated goal of going to college.

Interesting. Naturally, there are numbers to show what happens with players that get their undergrad degree, but stay at the same school for their final year of eligibility while enrolled in grad school. Right?

Left unspoken: What about players who graduate and stay at their school with immediate eligibility left? Are we to believe they all seriously pursue a graduate degree instead of simply taking enough classes to play until their eligibility expires? Should those players sit if they stay at their school but are not truly progressing toward a graduate degree? Why is it academically OK for those graduates to continue playing but not transfers?

“Um, I don’t have a good answer for you, because I don’t know that we’re tracking that,” the Pac-12’s Scott said.

Scott is right. The NCAA said it can’t currently provide data on the number of grad students who stay at their same school and earn a degree. That’s pretty important information if the NCAA is going to connect transferring as the root cause for athletes who don’t obtain a grad degree while in grad school.

Mike DeCourcy notes way back in 2005, how Matt Leinart came back for his senior year at USC. But was only 2 credits short of graduating. Rather than just take a course in the summer or some other way to graduate. Rather than pursue a graduate degree early, he enrolled in ballroom dancing. Clearly he was there only for football at that point. No one objected. Instead, we all laughed a little and celebrated Leinart for wanting to stay in school and play football at USC rather than immediately pursue his NFL career.

It begs the question as to why that is good, but even getting a semester of grad school is bad? I mean, isn’t that the NCAA and college institutions rationalization for the good of the one-and-done rule in college basketball? That even a semester or year of college education is important and helps the kids?

There are plenty of other issues in college athletics begging for attention, but this is one that that is starting to suck up the oxygen.

Then there is the blatant hypocrisy in play.

“I don’t think [the rule] fits into the core values of intercollegiate athletics,” Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson told reporters recently. “The kid from Eastern Washington is going to Oregon — and [Eastern Washington is] opening the season [against] them. It just doesn’t feel right.”

“What message does that send to his teammates that have been sweating and bleeding with him for three years?” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told CBSSports.com. “He gets a better offer and jumps  ship. I’m not sure that’s a great message to send to a group of teammates.”

As NCAA matters go, their hypocrisy is unsurprising, yet no less infuriating.

In 2012, Benson left a job he’d held for 18 years as commissioner of the WAC when it became apparent that conference was crumbling. (It dropped football a year later.) He now oversees a more stable conference. That same year, Bowlsby left his post as athletic director at Stanford, whose football program he’d helped rescue from the ashes, to take a prestigious job as commissioner of one of the Power 5 conferences.

As adults with college degrees, no one questioned either’s right to better themselves professionally. They earned those opportunities thanks to strong performances in their chosen field.

But when it comes to a college athlete like Adams — himself now an adult with a college degree — the ability to leave one place for a career-boosting opportunity at another is seen as a breakdown in need of correction.

And of course the coaches themselves have a penchant for leaving for a better opportunity. Somehow those better economic opportunities should not be applied to the student-athletes.

One of the few coaches speaking for the good of the rule is Stanford football coach David Shaw.

You might think Stanford’s David Shaw would oppose the rule. For one thing, he’s the coach at one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions. If something’s perceived to be making a mockery of academics, he’s likely to be among the chief critics. Furthermore, since nearly all of his players graduate in four years, his team is more ripe than most to lose them. This offseason alone, Stanford has added one grad transfer, Cal defensive end Brennan Scarlett, but lost four of its own, including former starting cornerback Wayne Lyons to Michigan.

“I’ve been excited for those guys,” said Shaw. “They fulfilled their part, they got their undergraduate degree, they’re college graduates. If they want to use that fifth year somewhere else at a different program, I personally see no problem with that.”

Whoa. Sanity.

In short, it’s patently absurd for officials who claim to have athletes’ best interests in mind to be threatening one of the most athlete-friendly rules in their book, not to mention one that specifically incentivizes players to graduate. No, most of them don’t go on to complete their master’s degrees, but that doesn’t mean they don’t better themselves.

Former NC State grad transfer Russell Wilson might have never blossomed into a Super Bowl quarterback without his one season in Wisconsin’s pro-style offense.

Former Valparaiso basketball star Brandon Wood likely never would have experienced the Sweet 16 if not for getting his degree and spending his senior season at Michigan State. Wood now plays professionally in Europe.

Former Florida offensive lineman and grad transfer Ian Silberman became a full-time starter for the first time as a senior at Boston College and got drafted by the San Francisco 49ers earlier this month.

The list could go on and on.

Yet if history is any indicator, the member institutions will have the NCAA change the rule soon. All for the “good” of the student athlete and some nebulous idea of integrity.