There's been some more movement on the Leti Romero situation. Romero, if you don't know, is a player for the Kansas State women's basketball team. She's a native of the Canary Islands in Spain, and she was recruited to Manhattan by (then) Kansas State head coach Deb Patterson. Romero led the team with 14.2 ppg as a freshman, but the Wildcats finished 11-19. This cost longtime head coach Patterson her job.
Enter new coach Jeff Mittie. Romero, feeling a personal connection with Patterson, wants to transfer now that all of her old connections have moved on. The K-State athletic department, however, refuses to let her go, even though they've let other athletes in similar situations go. The only comments from the athletic department hint at (although do not state) that there is some sort of interference from the ex-coaching staff. Are coaches promising that they can bring Romero to their future school?
The newest movement is that virtually the entire old Kansas State coaching staff has ended up at Northern Colorado. This should make it easy for K-State to budge. Just release Romero on the condition that she can't enroll at Northern Colorado. Done deal, right?
Nah.
The normal out for an athlete is leave the school, enroll at your intended destination, and sit out a year while you pay your own way. However, Romero only has a student visa. She can't go to school without a scholarship in the US and her family doesn't have the money to pay a year's worth of out-of-state tuition. She's either stuck at Kansas State, or she goes back to Spain and gives up playing in the US.
Everyone is a loser in this situation.
Romero is obviously a loser. She has no good choices. Stay in a play you don't want to be, or give up your goal of a US education and a NCAA career.
Mittie is a loser. He's stuck with a player that doesn't want to be there. He'll have to keep any future recruit away from her during official visits, lest Romero say something that badmouths the school.
The Kansas State athletic department is a loser, or at least women's basketball is. The reputation of K-State is clouded. If you're a recruit, do you really want to sign at K-State? The strategy from Manhattan is to remain silent and hope this blows over, but it ain't going to blow over.
But the biggest loser is the NCAA. The whole situation highlights one thing : there is no one to advocate for the "student athlete" in organized college sports. The NCAA is entirely on the side of its member institutions and could care less about those that play its sports. Once a scholarship is granted, they consider their work done and from that moment on, the only response they expect from a student is deference.
Even the term "student athlete" is one coined by the NCAA to put students who play sports at a disadvantage.
A player gets seriously injured on the playing field. "Sorry, you're a student. You're doing this as a volunteer. We don't have to recompense you if we don't feel like it." Well then, since I'm a student I really need this time to study for my physics exam. "Sorry, you're an athlete. That would take you away from practices and we might take away that scholarship we gave you. And you can't major in physics. Maybe sociology. "If you're ever confused about what the duties of a "student athlete" are, an easy (and often correct) way to interpret this term is that the "student athlete" is a student when it's most advantageous for the NCAA to have them be a student and they are an athlete when it's most advantageous for the NCAA to have them be an athlete. If there's a conflict, the matter is decided in terms of what is most advantageous for the NCAA.
And there are people out there who honestly can't figure out why the Northwestern football players were thinking about forming a union?
There is no one to advocate for Leti Romero's case, except the fans. If a school makes a bad decision, where can Romero go? The answer is "nowhere", and that's exactly the answer the NCAA would give in an unguarded moment. The NCAA's stated job is to be the enforcement arm of the rules of college athletics, to make sure that no school has an unfair advantage over any other school. But their unstated job is to make sure that all schools have an unfair advantage over their athletes. Athletes are starting to recognize their power and there might be great changes over the next couple of decades, but these changes will probably come too late for Leti Romero.
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