You could search heaven and earth and not find another college quarterback who could fill Marcus Mariota’s shoes.
But that hasn’t stopped the University of Oregon from looking everywhere under the Big Sky.
Oregon raised eyebrows when it lured Vernon Adams away from Eastern Washington to play his senior year in Eugene.
Now it appears the Ducks are at it again. Montana State quarterback Dakota Prukop has voiced interest in joining Oregon for his final year of eligibility.
The 6-foot-2 dual-threat QB, who accounted for 3,822 yards of total offense and 39 touchdowns last season, has obtained a release from Montana State to transfer after he graduates this winter. Prukop has expressed interest in Oregon, TCU and Texas.
This has led to a familiar chorus of complaints about a rule that allows fifth-year seniors to transfer without sitting out a year.
When Adams left Eastern Washington, former Montana State coach Rob Ash criticized the fifth-year transfer rule. He compared the Football Championship Subdivision to “a farm system.”
“I’m really opposed to this rule the way it’s starting to be manipulated by FBS schools,” Ash told the Billings Gazette. “As FCS coaches, we need to lobby now to get this rule changed.”
Eastern Washington coach Beau Baldwin voiced similar complaints on a Spokane radio station after Adams announced he was leaving for Oregon.
“It’s not what the rule is intended for, and when you’re Oregon and we’ve gotten a guy that we recruited when no one else was … ultimately we feel like, you know what, we were also the ones who developed him from a level where obviously out of high school he wasn’t at that level,” Baldwin said.
“I don’t see (Ohio State coach) Urban Meyer going to Northern Iowa for his next guy,” he added.
The fifth-year transfer rule sends shivers up the spines of some coaches. But like Elsa in “Frozen,” they need to just “let it go.”
Nobody raises a stink when a coach bolts from a lower division to a larger school. A Big Sky athletic director doesn’t demand that coach stay because his school “developed him” into a Division-I talent.
So why shouldn’t players have the same opportunity?
Recruiting players out of high school is as much of a crap shoot as a blue-chip poker game. The rosters of top-tier college programs are filled with 4- and 5-star recruits who are there because, in many cases, they developed at a younger age than their peers. Many never reach the potential they were recruited for.
What about an under-recruited player who didn’t hit his stride until his junior year in college? Why should he not have the same opportunity to perform for NFL scouts on the biggest stage?
And those concerns about college football becoming a tiered system? We’ve already gone too far down that road.
The ability of the “Power 5” BCS conferences to offer financial stipends beyond cost of attendance will only increase the gap between college football’s haves and have-nots. Even within large conferences, there are glitzy programs (ahem, Oregon) with an inherent advantage over others that don’t have as many big-money donors.
College football is a game built upon money, prestige and power. The universities cash in on it. Many coaches cash in on it.
So why shouldn’t players be allowed to fully pursue all that college football can offer?
Micah Rice is The Columbian’s Sports Editor. Reach him at 360-735-4548, micah.rice@columbian.com or on Twitter @col_mrice.
