The Southeastern Conference’s executive committee voted Friday to no longer require its graduate transfer athletes to sit out a year when moving to another league school.
Thus creating what Alabama football coach Nick Saban referred to as “free agency” earlier in the week.
The SEC’s four-day meetings came to a close Friday in Destin, Florida, with a pair of changes in transfer policy being the biggest news. The SEC also voted to allow players to transfer from one league school to another and become immediately eligible if the former program is facing an NCAA-mandated postseason ban.
That scenario is currently in play, as Ole Miss will be banned from a bowl game for a second consecutive season.
“If a kid goes to a school and gets caught up in doing something that is not of his doing, he should not be punished for something that the school did wrong,” first-year Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher told reporters in Destin. “He ought to have the ability to go out. I know that’s controversial, but those kids only have a four-year window.