There are few truths in life. Death, taxes, and Gonzaga in the NCAA Tournament is one of them. The NCAA making the most NCAA decision possible? That is one of the other ones.
Over the weekend, incoming Gonzaga transfer Tyon Grant-Foster had his waiver application to play in the upcoming year denied. Why? Who the hell knows.
The NCAA now allows JUCO players one extra year of eligibility at the NCAA level. The NCAA also says that players have five years of eligibility. That right there, is the crux of the matter.
The TL;DR version of Grant-Foster’s story goes with him playing two years at Indian Hills Community College. He then transferred to Kansas, didn’t play much, and subsequently transferred to DePaul. He played one game for the Blue Demons, literally nearly died at halftime, and didn’t play organized basketball again for 16 more months.
Grant-Foster found himself at Grand Canyon, where he excelled for years number three and four. Year number five, the one supposed to be given to JUCO players, was to finish out at Gonzaga. The NCAA had other ideas.
As the NCAA has made a complete mockery of the college sports models by refusing to pay players any compensation until they were literally forced to by lawsuits, allowed the conferences to completely gut any semblance of regional rivalries all in the name of $$$, constantly ruse about the idea of expanding the NCAA Tournament (one of the few ideas today that America can unite against), there has always been one consistent theme: the NCAA constantly makes cruel and heartbreaking decisions on individual players because it has no other authority otherwise.
The governing body of college sports longed abandoned the idea of actual governance when it started nickel and diming players for violations from the rule book that only the ghouls at the NCAA compliance office are aware of, such as forcing Oklahoma football players to donate $3.83 for eating too much pasta at a graduation banquet.
The Grant-Foster situation is a unique one with more gray areas than the black and white rulebook allows. The Gonzaga Bulldogs have filed a preliminary injunction and will look to the courts to get a different answer. Until then, the only victim in this grand scheme of things, Grant-Foster, a player who once again literally nearly died on the court, joins the dubious list of players whose lives and careers became stuck in the purgatory thanks to the whims of the NCAA.
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