Syracuse Basketball: Utter non-sense if Alan Griffin can’t play right away

The NCAA is handing out tons of waivers for players to have immediate eligibility, and one of them better go to Syracuse basketball wing Alan Griffin.

Syracuse basketball fanatics are anxiously awaiting word from the NCAA on whether Illinois transfer Alan Griffin will have the ability to officially compete for the Orange this fall – or whenever the next season occurs amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein recently tweeted out that the “NCAA is handing out waivers for immediate eligibility like they’re seedless watermelon at the 4th of July Party. Why the gray area? Why not take a stand and add clarity for everyone involved? WHERE IS THE LEADERSHIP?”

Rothstein is one of the best in the business, but we don’t see eye to eye on this matter. I believe that every student-athlete, in ALL sports, should have the ability to transfer once without having to sit out a term.

Currently, that doesn’t hold true for players in college basketball, football, and a few other select sports. It’s ridiculous. Every student-athlete should have the right to transfer on a single occasion without having to sit out one year. Level the playing field, NCAA.

In all fairness, NCAA leaders are seriously weighing rule changes that would enable this to happen, but it won’t transpire in time for the 2020-21 basketball campaign.

Heck, even NCAA President “Mark Emmert says he supports all athletes’ ability to transfer one time and play immediately,” according to a tweet from Nicole Auerbach, a senior college football writer with The Athletic.

On July 30, in one of the more recent examples on this topic, Rothstein, citing sources, tweeted that “Bryant’s Melo Eggleston and Luke Sutherland have both received waivers from the NCAA and will be immediately eligible for the 20-21 season. Transfers from Arkansas State and Siena.”

If so many college basketball transfers are receiving waivers for immediate eligibility, then Griffin, a talented 6-foot-5 wing from Ossining, N.Y., absolutely needs to get one, too. His hometown is much closer to the Hill than Illinois, and that’s important given the pandemic.

Some Syracuse basketball fanatics, myself included, think it’s taking way too long for the NCAA to weigh on Griffin’s status, but who knows when he actually applied for a waiver, and how extensive the NCAA backlog is on these kinds of requests.

I don’t care all that much if NCAA officials take a bit longer to give Griffin their decision. What solely matters is that they do the just thing and allow Griffin to don a ‘Cuse uniform, and actually see court action, in the near future. Any other type of decision on the NCAA’s part would prove totally absurd.