OKLAHOMA CITY -- Former Texas Tech quarterback Baker Mayfield lost an appeal Friday to avoid giving up a year of eligibility at Oklahoma.

According to Texas Tech policy, when a player transfers within the conference, he must sit out the next year and lose a year of eligibility. Mayfield maintained that he shouldn't lose eligibility based on the fact that he walked on and was never under scholarship at Texas Tech.

A five-member panel of Texas Tech's athletics council heard Mayfield's case and unanimously rejected it, saying its decision was in line with school and NCAA rules.

Mayfield told ESPN.com earlier this week that he would likely look at other schools if his appeal to transfer within the Big 12 was denied.

"Yeah, I probably would, but I don't know," he said.

Mayfield said he's received calls from East Carolina and Houston, among others.

In a surprising move last month, Mayfield decided to transfer from Texas Tech despite winning the starting quarterback job in the preseason as a walk-on true freshman. Initially, he vaguely cited a "miscommunication" with coach Kliff Kingsbury as the reason.

"When I got hurt [Week 5 at Kansas], there was no communication between me and my coach," Mayfield told ESPN.com. "When I got healthy, I didn't know why I wasn't playing right away. At that time, we were losing a couple games in a row. I was still clueless as to why I wasn't playing. That was really frustrating for me because I started the first five games and we won. So, I just didn't really know exactly what he was thinking or what the situation was."

Mayfield played in eight games as a freshman this past season at Tech, passing for 2,315 yards and 12 touchdowns and running for 190 yards and three more scores.

Mayfield said Texas Tech would not give him a scholarship for the spring, despite his lofty statistics.

Oklahoma in the spring will have five scholarship quarterbacks, including freshman Trevor Knight, who was named MVP in the Allstate Sugar Bowl victory over Alabama. But Mayfield said Oklahoma, the team he grew up rooting for, was always his first choice.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.