This week has been filled with more anger from Tar Heel fans about the Tez Walker eligibility situation after a different two time undergraduate transfer had his waiver approved. A new report this evening directly involving Walker has people even more fired up and wondering just what the hell the NCAA is actually doing.
Earlier this evening, senior college football reporter for On3Sports, Matt Zeintz, reported that sources are telling him that Walker will be eligible for this year’s postseason. This means that he would be able to play in the team’s bowl game, but not the conference championship game if the team was to make it there on December 2nd. The reasoning behind this is because the ruling of his ineligibility requires Walker to miss the first two semesters that he is enrolled at Carolina and the fall semester does not come to an end until the week after the ACC Championship Game.
While this rule has some fired up, and rightfully so, it pales in comparison to the news earlier in the week that fellow two-time transfer Craig McDonald was being granted his eligibility for the remainder of the season with the Minnesota Golden Gophers. McDonald started his career at Iowa State where he played 13 games as a redshirt freshman before transferring to Auburn for the 2022 season. He played two games for the Tigers before suffering a season-ending injury, leading to him entering the transfer portal again back in April after participating in spring camp with the team. He enrolled at Minnesota back in the May, well after the rule for two-time transfers was already in place.
While there are some other decisions that left us frustrated, this one might be the worst of the bunch. One of the main reasons that Walker’s waiver was denied was because of the fact that he “played” at two different schools. As we laid out above, McDonald played games at both of his previous schools, while Walker only played at Kent State. It also doesn’t appear that McDonald had any sort of special circumstances behind his transfer, while Walker had a laundry list of legitimate reasons for his move to Carolina.
It shouldn’t come as any shock that the NCAA continues to prove its inconsistency and incompetence on issues like this. Hopefully these decision from the NCAA adds to the motivation for the athletic department to file a lawsuit against the governing body.