Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany defends no transfer ban

CHICAGO — Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany believes the 14 schools in his league are best prepared to handle decisions regarding student-athletes and serious misconduct, as opposed to having a blanket rule against certain behavior imposed by the conference.

The Southeastern Conference, the Pac-12 and the Big 12 have all adopted rules restricting their member schools from accepting student-athletes who are guilty of serious misconduct at their previous school. These transfer bans, all implemented in recent months and years, come along with an increased national awareness about sexual assault and domestic violence, as well as some high-profile incidents making headlines.

Delany said the Big Ten has had “deep discussions” with its athletic directors, faculty members and lawyers about the topic but ultimately feels it is best to leave up to individual universities.

“We’ve got a lot of confidence in our institutions being totally committed to eliminating violence, sexual violence in every way,” Delany said at Big Ten media days on Tuesday.

He added later that he thinks other leagues are simply trying to figure out policies that will work for them, and he plans on watching to see how they operate over the next five years, across various states and constituencies.

“It may work for them,” Delany said. “We’ve had really deep discussions with our campuses — not with our coaches — our campuses, legal counsel and experts both on Title IX as well as on the Cleary Act. We believe, looking at all of the factors including the students’ interest, the universities’ interest and not necessarily the coaches’ interest — this is not the tail wagging the dog — this is about getting it right, getting it right in a number of sets of circumstances.

“We have criminal law, state law, federal law, university codes. To think that you can pass a four- or five-paragraph conference rule to accommodate all of that, I think it’s putting a lot of faith in conference policies.”