NCAA Denies Jeremiah Masoli's Waiver to Play at Ole Miss This Year

by Year2 on Aug 31, 2010 6:10 PM EDT in SEC Football

In a what is a big blow to Ole Miss's ambitions this fall, the NCAA has denied a waiver to Jeremiah Masoli that would have allowed him to play this fall.

Typically, the NCAA will grant waivers to players who have already graduated to allow them to transfer and play right away if their field of graduate studies is not offered at the player's first school. That is the case with Masoli, but the NCAA can see that there's more to his case. He got in serious trouble with the Oregon program, and while he wasn't outright dismissed, you don't have to be a rocket surgeon to figure out that he didn't transfer the Ole Miss solely for academic reasons.

While Masoli met the letter of the transfer waiver rule, he obviously didn't follow the spirit of it. Ole Miss is appealing, of course, and if the appeal is denied as well, Masoli will red shirt and be able to play in 2011.

So that's two guys in NCAA limbo whose fates have been decided, between Masoli and Justin Hunter. Hopefully we'll get some more information on guys like Weslye Saunders and the UNC gang soon.

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I can understand a certain degree of schadenfreude...

…and the NCAA can pretty much do whatever they want with no checks or balances on the system, but this really stinks.

It stinks because the NCAA is denying eligibility for an arbitrary reason, despite everyone involved following all proper procedures to the letter of the rule. It’s not a “loophole”. It’s a rule written by the NCAA itself. If they want to change it, that’s fine. Until they change it, however, they should follow their own guidelines.

by OxfordAndrew on Aug 31, 2010 7:26 PM EDT reply actions

I’d be upset too. The problem is the NCAA gives itself a huge amount of discretion with these waiver requests. If the guy graduated, then he should be allowed to play this year unless the NCAA shows that the transfer was for athletic reasons rather than academic reasons. However, the NCAA wrote the rules and it obviously chose not to do this.

I also don’t like the timing, why wait until late August to figure this out?

by Live Chickens on Aug 31, 2010 7:58 PM EDT up reply actions

Exactly the timing is the worst part of this.

They waited till there was no chance to prepare better for not having Masoli. We have operated for a solid month with him as our second string QB that would see a fair amount of gametime. However had we known that following all of the rules would still get the request denied I am sure we would have prepared Mackey more as our second string.

by Jalakin on Aug 31, 2010 8:13 PM EDT up reply actions