TCU believes spring athletes deserve chance to ‘finish what they started’
TCU is welcoming back senior spring sport athletes who wish to take advantage of the extra eligibility option granted by the NCAA last month.
“We have extended the offer to those seniors who were impacted to come back and finish what they started,” athletic director Jeremiah Donati said.
Some schools, though, are not taking that approach. Wisconsin became the first notable school to make its policy known that it wouldn’t allow seniors to return last week.
Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez referred to the NCAA’s policy as “an overreaction.”
But college sports’ sanctioning body opted to go forward with plans to offer eligibility relief after canceling all of its spring sport championships, as well as March Madness, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The NCAA Division I Council also relaxed its scholarship and roster limits to allow seniors to return without affecting incoming recruits for the 2020-21 season.
It was a decision that “pleasantly surprised” Donati, as well as other athletic directors in the Big 12. The conference was in favor of the eligibility relief.
But a source said the majority of Big Ten athletic directors weren’t in favor of it. Clearly that group included Alvarez.
Iowa athletic director Gary Barta said last week that his department was still working through the issue. With about 25 to 35 spring sports seniors wanting to return, Barta said it’d cost Iowa about $500,000 in scholarship costs.
Ohio State’s Gene Smith, meanwhile, said the school would welcome back 31 of 70 spring sports seniors in 2021 with scholarship costs about $630,000 and total expenses about $900,000.
“We felt it was important to provide those kids that opportunity,” Smith said, via a story on ESPN.
That’s the mindset Donati and several Big 12 athletic directors have taken. Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork had a similar approach, saying he was in favor of “liberalizing eligibility rules” amid the pandemic.
If every spring sport senior returned to Texas A&M, Bjork said, it’d cost about $565,000. Most Power Five schools would be looking at similar costs in the $500,000 range, depending on how many spring sport programs it has and how many seniors are coming back.
As far as TCU is concerned, the school is doing its best to accommodate seniors who want to return.
TCU baseball, for instance, expects most — if not all — of its seniors to return. Seniors such as Haylen Green, Charles King and Conner Shepherd took to social media to plead their cases before the NCAA vote.
“Thanks for doing the right thing @NCAA,” Green wrote shortly after the vote to grant extra eligibility.
Fortunately for Green, he’s at TCU. Not Wisconsin.
