This is so stupid.

It has been seven weeks since Cam Johnson made it known that he was transferring from Pitt as a grad transfer with two full years of eligibility left. To no one’s surprise the process of finding a new home has been a slow one.

A long-armed, tall guard who shoots better then 40% on 3s. From a Power conference. He was going to be in demand. And he was. Teams like Arizona, Kentucky, Oregon and others all contacted him. He took plenty of visits.

It was clear that Johnson was looking to play at a big name school where he would get plenty of exposure.

But a funny thing has happened. A lot of those big schools haven’t waited for him. They’ve made him wait for them. Arizona fell of the board this week when Rawle Alkins decided to withdraw from the NBA draft and return for his sophomore year. Kentucky is slow playing him.

Those two years are double-edged for the bigger programs. It is a bigger commitment then simply going with a regular grad transfer who is only there for one year.

And very quietly Cam Johnson had sought to expand his potential schools to include ones in the ACC. It may no longer be an official conference rule barring in-conference transfers, but Pitt and basketball coach Kevin Stallings (like most schools) put that restriction on his transfer. He appealed to the school, and was given permission to talk to them, but if he wished to transfer he would have to sit a year — like a regular transfer.

This explains how, suddenly last week, Cam Johnson was being linked to North Carolina. Of course, both UNC and Johnson don’t want to have the restriction of sitting out a year.

This means putting some public pressure — making the restriction known — on Pitt and Stallings to remove the restriction. Which may explain some more context of Stallings complaining in his interview a couple weeks ago about media pressure on coaches over releasing kids from NLIs and transfers. Odds are, Cam Johnson was in the midst of the appeal at that point. I had assumed it was mostly about releasing Aaron Thompson from his NLI.

Stallings is in a bind mostly of his own making. His treatment of Sheldon Jeter those many years ago still haunts. The actions there, still remain indefensible. The in-conference restriction is hardly outrageous in college sports, but Stallings has less room to move.

I’m also a bit surprised to see UNC and Roy Williams pursue Cam Johnson like this. Williams is good friends with Stallings. Williams was one of Stallings’ mentors and had Stallings as a lead assistant for several years at Kansas. He knows the history of Stallings and transfer issues. He knows that UNC going for Johnson will be bad for Stallings on several levels. Yet, there he is, going after Johnson. And this is why folks in Raleigh and Durham get chaffed at the whole folksy, “Ol Roy” schtick. Don’t ever buy into the narrative of coaching — at this level — being anything but cutthroat and the bottom line.

There is a certain inevitability to seeing the restrictions removed, though.

Other schools have previously attempted to prevent their players from transferring to opposing schools within their conference or on their future schedules, or to schools others believe may have tampered with a player. Examples include Michigan with Spike Albrecht and Ricky Doyle, as well as Washington State and Valentine Izundu in 2016, Memphis and Austin Nichols in 2015 and Wisconsin and Jarrod Uthoff in 2012.

Each decision faced public backlash, followed by the removal of most, if not all, of the restrictions. Pittsburgh has already backtracked some, allowing Johnson to contact ACC schools, but if the past is any indication of the future, the university may lift any remaining restrictions due to public outrage.

This weekend ESPN analyst Jay Bilas took up the cause. Here’s, by-and-large, the collected tweets. This is one of Bilas’ favorite causes. The issue of players as chattel. Bilas regularly rails on the NCAA collectively over how players are restricted and controlled. And when a player gets restricted by a school on transfers he is happy to make that part of the overall narrative.  He puts Pitt on blast.

That caused Pitt fans on Twitter to respond with anger at Bilas. As you would expect. If you look at his tweets, Kevin Stallings isn’t mentioned once. It is all about Pitt and the institutions in general. There’s no specifying the individuals involved for a couple of reasons. But you attack the school, you are attacking the fans.

Bilas, like most analysts, is very friendly with the people he covers — the coaches in particular. So, he doesn’t want to have to attack the Stallings or any of the coaches if he can avoid it. If the coaches choose to hide behind school/NCAA policies for their own actions, Bilas is more than happy to let them and just go after the school or NCAA rather then hold the coaches accountable.

Bilas is a lawyer by trade, and that is important in looking at what he is doing. He is making his case. In his view, he doesn’t have to be fair or look at the other side. He simply has to advocate his position and let others do the work of countering him. He’s not going to back down from his position. Odds are, he won’t even concede a point.

For making the case, it is far easier to attack institutions or organizations then to target an individual. A nice vague, faceless enemy. It’s why propaganda tries to demonize groups or some collective rather then a single person or a few people.

Best not to take it personally. It’s going to suck for a little while.