Michigan Basketball: John Beilein Isn’t The Devil
Michigan basketball just saw two players decide to transfer, which is a natural part of the sport. Stop making John Beilein out to be the devil.
Within 24 hours, between Sunday night and Monday afternoon, we received news that Michigan basketball would be losing two players to transfer.
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ESPN reported late Sunday night that Spike Albrecht has been granted his release from the program and will play somewhere else for his final year of eligibility. (Michigan hasn’t announced this yet.) Then on Monday the university announced sophomore Ricky Doyle will also be transferring.
You didn’t see it so much with the news about Doyle, but when everyone caught wind of Albrecht being cleared to walk away from Michigan, you can just imagine how some fans reacted.
It was John Beilein this, John Beilein that.
See for yourself.
@JohnBeilein pretty sad you force people out then try to control where they can and can't go
— mike funneman (@FunnemanMike) March 30, 2016
John Beilein runs players off Michigan roster for second straight season, no one makes verb out of his name: https://t.co/D2MY3Xjd1T
— crimson quarry (@crimsonquarry) March 29, 2016
It’s not the prevailing attitude, but there’s a faction of fans (and other who are just commenting for the sake of it) who really feel like Beilein is doing something dark and dirty with his roster.
Think again.
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We see this happen in college basketball and college football, especially in the latter, all the time. It’s completely common, like it or not. We could have a pointless, never-ending conversation about the morality of it, or we could just move on with our lives knowing this is something far beyond our control, and our criticisms, no matter how well articulated, just blow away in any number of directions.
Just look at Michigan State. On Sunday, a day before we woke up and saw Albrecht is transferring, the Spartans saw two players transfer. Sophomores Marvin Clark and Javon Bess both opted to transfer, and now Michigan State has two more scholarship slots open.
Without Albrecht accounted for next season, Michigan was one over the scholarship limit anyway. There still had to be one more moving piece, and that’s what we saw with Doyle.
Are you going to tell me Beilein should have gone about recruiting with the assumption that Albrecht was going to hit a road bump in his recovery from hip surgeries and then take a medical redshirt? No way. You can’t plan for these things; all you can do is react. That’s what Beilein’s doing. Why he’s criticized for it is beyond me.
If you’re interested, the much more relevant discussion we could be having is the practice of limiting where players are allowed to transfer.
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But to sit there and turn Beilein into a bad guy for participating in this common and necessary practice—come on.