As the Southeastern Conference's annual meetings kicked off Tuesday in Destin, Fla., Alabama football coach Nick Saban defended his program’s move to block the transfer of a backup offensive lineman by expressing his distaste for some potential alterations to transfer rules.
Currently, SEC rules require grad transfers have to sit out a year when moving from one SEC team to another — though they can appeal — and NCAA rules allow teams to prevent players from transferring to certain programs. There's discussion of both changing.
"If we agree in the SEC at these meetings that we're going to have free agency in our league and everybody can go wherever they want to go when they graduate, that's what we should do,” Saban said while discussing Brandon Kennedy, a graduate transfer with three years of eligibility who Alabama is preventing from transferring within in the conference.