Khari Harding doesn’t want to be at Tulsa. If he did, the Edmond, Okla., product would’ve signed there out of high school. Harding instead signed with Auburn as a member of the Tigers’ 2013 class and planned to stay on the Plains. That is, until his father Corie’s cancer came back.
Harding, understandably, transferred close to home to be close to his ailing father and hoped to play immediately under the NCAA’s hardship waiver. Hundreds of athletes before him have done the very same thing.
Only the NCAA just this week ratified a piece of legislation eliminating the immediate eligibility portion of that rule. Under the letter of the law, it doesn’t matter that Harding enrolled at Tulsa at the beginning of the spring semester; the rule goes into effect immediately. The new legislation allows athletes to extend their eligibility by one year in exchange for sitting their first year on their new campus, meaning Harding could redshirt in 2015 and play for the Golden Hurricane in 2016 and 2017. But that goes back to the reason Harding, a defensive back with five career appearances, transferred in the first place. This is his father’s second bout with cancer and there is no guarantee he’ll be able to watch Harding play 18 months from now. Immediate eligibility is of tantamount importance to the Harding family.
“I’m not saying Tulsa’s bad or anything like that, and obviously it wasn’t guaranteed that he’d be able to play anyway, but why would he have left a place he really, really loved if we had known this rule change was happening?,” Corie Harding told The Oklahoman. His paperwork went in in January, and now they come out with this right in the middle of spring football? This is really, really devastating to hear.”
“If we knew this, Khari never would have left..... I know for a fact the first thing that will come out of his mouth is he should have stayed at Auburn,” Corie Harding told AL.com. “I know that for sure.”Guess I gotta get ready for 2016 season...
— Mookie Harding (@2Duece2Duece) March 19, 2015
So, what do you do if you’re the NCAA here and your rule book, for the 476th time in the last two years, has walked you into a bear trap of a public relations situation? Stick to your guns? Allow Harding to transfer back to Auburn? To be fair to the NCAA, this rule has been on the table for discussion for nearly a full year now and was born out of a desire to stop athletes from using the hardship waiver as a means to find a better playing situation. Harding, however, isn’t one of those loophole seekers. In fact, he’s the poster child of why this waiver was created in the first place.
The most compassionate (and p.r. friendly) decision would be to grant Harding a waiver to the waiver and grandfather him into the old rule on account of the fact that he transferred before the new legislation came into effect. It would allow the NCAA to defend itself from setting a precedent for exceptions while at the same time, and far more importantly, allow a son to play in front of his father for perhaps the last time.