Written by Andrew Carter at News Observer.com
After announcing his intention to transfer to North Carolina, Johnson, a former basketball player at Pitt, released a lengthy statement in which he argues why he should be immediately eligible to compete at UNC.
Johnson, who has two years of remaining eligibility after he graduated in three years from Pitt, wrote that UNC is “the one school that fits my academic and athletic interests the most.” Pitt, though, is restricting Johnson’s transfer and attempting to force him to sit out next season at UNC.
Unlike undergraduate college athletes, who are forced to sit out for one season after they transfer, those who transfer after graduating are eligible to compete immediately under NCAA rules. Different conferences and universities, though, have their own policies for graduate transfers.
Pitt’s policy restricts graduate transfers from being immediately eligible at any other ACC school, or any other school on Pitt’s schedule during the next year. And so while Johnson could be immediately eligible at schools outside of the ACC, Pitt is attempting to force him to sit out next season at UNC.
In his statement, Johnson emphasized the hypocrisy of such a stance. He wrote about how his first head coach at Pitt, Jamie Dixon, left the school and immediately began coaching at TCU, and about how Kevin Stallings left Vanderbilt to become Dixon’s immediate successor at Pitt.
During Johnson’s three years at Pitt, the university also lost one athletic director and hired another. Johnson also noted that the associate athletic director who heard his transfer appeal recently left for another job at another institution.
Of those who had come and gone, Johnson wrote, “all had the freedom to move as they pleased. As a student-athlete, who is not a paid employee of the school, and a graduate, shouldn’t I be granted the same freedom of movement?”
To continue reading this article, click here.
