COVID-19 has put all of American life on hold, and the NCAA’s legislative agenda is not immune.
In particular, college athletes hoping to obtain immediate eligibility upon transferring may have to wait a little longer.
According to Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports, the NCAA is discussing pushing the vote that would grant all college athletes a 1-time transfer exception from its planned date of April back to June.
Source: The NCAA is discussing moving the vote for immediate eligibility for transfers from April to June.
— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) March 27, 2020
The reason for the vote is that the NCAA has gradually broken down the year-in-residence barrier that ruled the day for decades. It started with the graduate transfer exception more than a decade ago, and continued more recently when the NCAA adopted legislation that would allow players to seek exemptions if they had a sick family member back home, if their academic well-being was threatened on their original campus, or other similar cases.
In reality, the exception proved to boil down to which families could hire the right representation and which could not.
While there is theoretically nothing stopping the NCAA from holding a remote vote, there is the practical reality that there are simply more pressing matters at hand.