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Why Everett Golson's transfer to Florida State shouldn't be an issue

Everett Golson to Florida State is college football free agency at work.

We should all be fine with it. Well, maybe Clemson and Georgia Tech and Louisville aren’t fine with it – they’re the teams chasing the Seminoles in the Atlantic Coast Conference – but there should be no new outcry about this form of free agency.

The former Notre Dame quarterback became a Notre Dame graduate on Sunday, and a Florida State Seminole on Tuesday. This immediate transfer eligibility is the way it can work if you perform what the NCAA says is the most important task assigned to its student-athletes – earn a degree.

Power to the player. At least the player with a bachelor’s degree. He can actually enjoy the same ability to change schools as a coach has.

[ThePostGame: College football's grad transfer QB market yields mixed bag at best]

This player power can also play havoc with a coach’s best-laid plans, which is one reason why you’ve heard a lot of recent harrumphing about changing the rule. Some of the harrumphing is about the lack of sincere interest by graduate transfers in obtaining a graduate degree – but I believe this primarily is an issue of control. Schools crave control of the (unpaid) labor force, as seen by the various rules restricting undergraduate transfers.

There is the rule requiring athletes to sit out a year of competition after transferring. That’s a valid one, or else we’d have mass migration every time a player gets benched.

Everett Golson had a rocky 2014 at Notre Dame. (AP)
Everett Golson had a rocky 2014 at Notre Dame. (AP)

There is the rule penalizing incoming freshmen a year of eligibility if they don’t fulfill terms of a signed National Letter of Intent without a release. That rule has its merits and its flaws: colleges should be able to count on an athlete showing up where he signed; but coaching changes that occur after a signed letter can trap an athlete in a program far different than the one he agreed to attend.

And there is the rule allowing schools to block transfers to certain programs. That’s an odious rule in general, taking institutional control of a player to an extreme. But in the case of Golson and Texas – one of his potential landing spots after Notre Dame – it’s an understandable issue. The Fighting Irish open the 2015 season against the Longhorns, and if the 2014 starting quarterback goes through spring practice and then takes the playbook with him to the first opponent of the new season, Brian Kelly may just have the aneurysm he often appears to be on the brink of during games.

Of course, Golson’s transfer options were further curtailed beyond Texas. There is a Southeastern Conference rule – generically referred to as the Jeremiah Masoli Rule – that forbids a member school taking a graduate transfer who has been "subject to official university or athletics department disciplinary action at any time during enrollment at any previous collegiate institution.”

Golson missed the 2013 season at Notre Dame after a case of academic fraud. However, he returned to school last year, started at quarterback and now has completed his degree work. He wasn’t running away from an ongoing disciplinary suspension somewhere else. Yet under that rule Golson could not have transferred to Georgia or Florida (two schools he recently visited in addition to Florida State), or Alabama, which reportedly also had interest.

The SEC rule should not apply to Golson. This is a league that has seen its share of sketchy characters transfer away from trouble at one league school and wind up at another after an “image rehab” season of junior college. But a guy who overcame his own issues at Notre Dame is inadmissible? That’s just dumb.

Whether the SEC blockade led Golson to Tallahassee or not, it’s potentially a big acquisition for Florida State. This has the potential to be the highest-impact graduate transfer since Russell Wilson left North Carolina State for Wisconsin and immediately took the Badgers to the Rose Bowl.

Golson has some proving to do – after starting the 2014 season on fire, he devolved into a turnover machine, and has committed 32 turnovers in 26 college games. But he also brings a dynamic athleticism, powerful arm and big-game experience to a talented team that may simply be a quarterback away from once again winning the ACC and competing for a national title.

Will Everett Golson beat out Sean MaGuire for Florida State's starting job? (AP)
Will Everett Golson beat out Sean MaGuire for Florida State's starting job? (AP)

If Golson plays like the guy who led Notre Dame to a 6-0 start last year, Florida State will have a playmaking leader at QB. If Golson plays like the guy who turned the ball over in bulk in the second half of the year and lost control of the starting job by season’s end, the Seminoles may have to rely on Sean Maguire after all.

If there is anyone who should dislike college football free agency, it’s guys like Maguire. The junior waited his turn behind Jameis Winston, and did a decent job when thrown into the breach last year against Clemson when Winston was suspended for being a knucklehead. Maguire has done everything right at Florida State – everything except demonstrate he can be a great quarterback. For that, he likely will be bum-rushed back to the bench by a guy who is just passing through for the fall.

That’s the collateral damage of de facto free agency at a big-time program – especially at quarterback. Even if you’ve patiently risen to the top of the depth chart, you could be expendable if someone else suddenly comes along.

But if that’s the worst thing anyone can say about graduate transfers in college sports, we can live with it. The one NCAA rule that empowers players should not be rescinded because it lessens a school’s control.