Explaining the NCAA rule changes complicating immediate eligibility for UNC preseason All-ACC receiver Tez Walker, other multi-time transfers

For Tez Walker and North Carolina, this wasn’t the expected outcome. At least it wasn’t when the wide receiver first enrolled at UNC in early January.

At that point, the Tar Heels were (and had every reason to be) supremely confident that the Kent State transfer would be granted a waiver for immediate eligibility despite being a second-time transfer. The optimism was based on the NCAA’s rules and history with multi-time transfers.

But then came the changes. On Jan. 11, just two days after Walker enrolled at UNC, the NCAA released a revised set of guidelines intended to complicate the process of acquiring immediate eligibility for multi-time transfers that haven’t graduated yet.

Despite entering the transfer portal and joining the Tar Heels prior to the new guidelines going into effect, the waiver request for Walker (and the waiver requests for all other multi-time undergraduate transfers) were going to be evaluated based on those new rules from that point forward. As the NCAA Division I Council noted at that point, “Moving forward, student-athletes must meet one of the following criteria to be granted a waiver to compete immediately”:

1) “A demonstrated physical injury or illness or mental health condition that necessitated the student’s transfer (supporting documentation, care plans and proximity of the student’s support system will be considered).”

Or 2) “Exigent circumstances that clearly necessitate a student-athlete’s immediate departure from the previous school (e.g., physical assault or abuse, sexual assault) unrelated to the student-athlete’s athletics participation.”

Those changes to NCAA guidelines are behind the NCAA’s recent decisions to deny immediately eligibility waivers for multi-time transfers such as Walker and Florida State defensive lineman Darrell Jackson, a transfer from Miami who committed to the Seminoles in December.

Two players who were expected to contribute for their new teams this season, including a preseason first-team All-ACC selection in the case of Walker, are now currently ineligible to play this year.

It’s not exactly a great look for the NCAA to be doing this at the same time that several schools are essentially going into the transfer portal without any ramifications, especially with both players having family medical situations as justifiable reasoning for wanting to be closer to home. It goes beyond just that, though, in being very much fair to question these rulings from the NCAA.

With Walker specifically, these were among the factors cited with the waiver request, according to sources:

1) Even though he’s technically a multi-time transfer, the first transfer shouldn’t count since the only season he spent at his first school (NC Central) was canceled due to COVID. After that season, he joined Kent State and spent two years there before transferring to UNC, which is two hours away from his hometown of Charlotte.

2) His head coach at Kent State, Sean Lewis, left for the offensive coordinator job at Colorado Dec. 5, four days before Walker entered the transfer portal. In addition, Walker’s position coach also left for another job.

3) Walker’s grandmother is dealing with a medical situation and has yet to be able to see him play in person in college, which would now be realistic.

4) Walker dealt with some mental health challenges as a result of his grandmother’s health situation and even talked to an athletic trainer at Kent State about that prior to entering the portal.

5) Kent State has been supportive of Walker being immediately eligible.

In the past, the outcome of a waiver request would typically be positive for players transferring closer to home with a family medical situation or players whose head coach and position coach left for new jobs or players whose previous school supports the waiver. Not with this, though.

Now, Walker and North Carolina have to wait and see if the NCAA will approve an appeal.