Message to Kalani Sitake: Let Francis Bernard go.

Message to Matt Wells: Let Joe Tukuafu go.

Message to any college coach whose soul should be rotting because he’s punishing an athlete on account of the fact said athlete wants to transfer for whatever reason to another program: Let him go.

Can we cut straight through the BS and get to what the rule requiring players to get a release from a school before they can move on is about?

It’s about continuing to slant every advantage toward institutions rather than individuals, individuals upon whose backs those institutions are profiting greatly while insisting those individuals should honor their commitments and be thankful for the scholarships and stipends they receive. The NCAA needs to rearrange its transfer rules.



You’ve heard and read the stories about Tukuafu and Bernard in recent days.

Tukuafu signed a letter of intent when he was 17 years old to play football at Utah State. He never enrolled at the school, instead leaving on a two-year LDS mission. He decided upon his return that BYU was a better fit for him. He wanted to go to school and play football in Provo. He’s now 21.

And Utah State will not release him, forcing him to sit out another year.

What a crock.

Wells stands on some sort of moral high ground, saying as a matter of principle the Aggies will not allow such a move by Tukuafu or anybody else. The kid signed that NLI four years ago, realized as that extended period went by that it was not the right move for him and longs to carry on with his life on a path that, by his judgment, is a better, happier one for him.

And Utah State wants to punish him by making him sit out another season. As the rules are written, USU can go ahead and stand its ground. But deep down, outside of protecting their own interests, Wells and administrators in Logan must know such a stance is pathetic.

The talk about how Utah State made plans for the player and needs to be protected from a student-athlete move like this because it hurts the program glances away from the idea that the program has 84 other scholarships by which it can absorb the blow. A football endeavor that teeters on the brink of disrepair or failure because a single player — or even a handful of them — wants to change his — or their — course doesn’t have much confidence in its own soundness or its ability to recruit or to offer much to other athletes.

Utah State must have tremendous insecurities and doubts about its football program.

And because of that, it’s swinging a punitive hammer on a kid who changed his freaking mind.

Those zealots who say, “Hey, he signed a contract and he needs to learn that such things are to be honored,” are spouting convenience that rewards institutions in an unbalanced system. Coaches who are paid millions of dollars sign contracts, too, but nobody makes them sit out a year before they can coach anywhere else. Buyouts are a minor inconvenience.

All Tukuafu wants to do, a fistful of years after that NLI was signed, is go to school and play football at BYU. Let him do it without punishing him further. It’s the right thing to do, regardless of what the rule says, a rule the enforcement of which makes Wells, his program, his school and his administrators look petty and paranoid.

The same is true with BYU and Bernard.

There are two ways to go with that scenario: The first is holding fast to the hard line — that Bernard came to BYU to play football, was committed to the program with an extra layer of commitment, agreeing to abide by the school’s honor code. If he wants to leave now, in his case, he’d be breaking a double-barreled agreement. The second is to simply let him go, if that’s what he wants, on account of him not being allowed by the school to play this season due to unspecified HC issues.

There are landmines all around Bernard’s situation. Sitake seemed to indicate earlier, during BYU’s football media day, that he would allow players, at least the ones coming off missions who wanted to transfer, to do so, including in his comments a good question:

“If a player comes home from his mission and doesn’t want to come back to BYU, I will release him. If people want to transfer, we will release them. The last thing I want is a player that doesn’t want to be here. So why would any other coach want that? To me, it’s pretty easy. If a kid doesn’t want to be a part of your program, let him go somewhere so he can have a great experience and do well, and then you can bring in someone else who wants to be part of your team.”

Bernard isn’t coming off a mission. But it’s obvious that he fell somewhere south of the behavioral standard championed at BYU, at least in the view of some guys in the honor code office who will not let him play this season.

The back end of that gets complex since there are other players — and students — at BYU who fall short of the standard who are not penalized in any way because the fired-up folks in the HC office don’t know with any specificity that the code is being broken. One athlete plays, another doesn’t, both are breaking the code. That is happening within BYU’s program as we speak. Fact. That’s why the honor code should be … well, an honor code, based on an individual’s willingness to come forward and voluntarily come to terms with his own shortcomings, not because he’s been ratted out or outwardly compelled. (But that’s a discussion for another time.)

If Bernard is angry because BYU won’t let him play — or for about any other reason — he should be permitted to transfer to Utah or anywhere else, if that’s what he really wants. The fear that such permission will create an environment in which a majority of players will ignore the honor code, go willy-nilly on it, because they know they can transfer if they get caught doesn’t show much faith in the kinds of athletes BYU is recruiting into its program.

Guys make HC mistakes. Why? Because they are human beings, just like everybody else.

And human beings should be allowed to attend school where they want to attend and play football where they want to play, if they’re good enough to do so. The institutional paranoia that exists, being afraid that all of college football will go nuts with transfers and schools won’t be able to protect what is “theirs” is overblown. Conveniently overblown, especially by coaches and programs who are haunted by their own insecurities. If there must be a disincentive, then make it less severe.

Given more freedom, there indeed may be some abuses, players leaving for more playing time, etc. But until millionaire coaches and administrators are held to the same rules — they must sit out a full year — to which college athletes are held, the answer here is straightforward.

Let the player(s) go, let freedom ring.