The Football Brainiacs

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As many of you know by now, the news broke yesterday that Oklahoma has reportedly filed their official waiver request seeking immediate eligibility of former Missouri wide receiver Dorial Green-Beckham. It’s a case not all that dissimilar — strictly in terms of the process, not the details surrounding each respective player’s circumstances — to the one they went through just a couple years ago with Jalen Saunders. In fact, in OU circles the Saunders case and particularly the timing in which he was ruled eligible has been used as a very common comparison for what people should be expecting in Green-Beckham’s current situation.

However, I have heard almost no one mention what I believe to be one very key detail in Saunders’ case and why he was not ruled eligible until mid-October.

Let us quickly revisit the timeline which brought Saunders to Norman. Word of his transfer from Fresno State first broke in April 2012, then a little later in early May it came out that he would land at OU. And while there were no official reports as to when Oklahoma first requested his waiver, it obviously took place at some point during that summer of 2012. Then, in September, Bob Stoops in one of his weekly press conferences announces that Saunders’ request was denied. At which point, at this is what I’ve been getting at, he would appeal and later — the week of the Texas game — be granted immediate eligibility.

All of which is to say if you’re looking at Saunders’ case and using that to set an expectation of not hearing back on Dorial Green-Beckham until halfway through OU’s season, then you could be in for a rather pleasant surprise. BUT (and this is the King Kong of ‘buts’) it bares repeating, as we’ve made clear here a number of times, there is no predicting what the NCAA is going to do.

Yes, by the letter of the rule Green-Beckham and Oklahoma have a strong case as to why he should be ruled immediately eligible.*

(*I’m not even going to get into here whether or not he “deserves” immediate eligibility. It’s an entirely different argument and will only distract from the point of clarification I’m attempting to make with this post. If you’re on the side of this being at least a fourth chance and him being undeserving of playing this season, that’s an argument I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with. But the rules are the rules and all Oklahoma is doing with this request is adhering to them. So if you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the NCAA. But you probably are already for any number of different reasons, and like I said we’re not here to argue the right or wrong of this. So….moving on.)

Yes, people close to the program still remain confident Green-Beckham will be ruled eligible.

But at the end of the day it’s still the NCAA. They could wait until the Bedlam game to rule on this if they really wanted to. No one can force them to make a decision in a timely manner. So this could still take just as long as it did with Saunders, or possibly even longer. We don’t know and that part of this equation has not changed since the day Green-Beckham first arrived on campus, and it won’t until we have an official ruling from the NCAA. And even then OU could still appeal the decision, if the initial request were to be denied, just like they did with Saunders. All anyone can do now is wait.

So while none of this is really news per se, I just wanted to make that point of clarification regarding Saunders’ appeal of the initial ruling and a reminder of that (the appeal process) being the primary reason he missed the first month of the 2012 season. The comparison of the process itself between Saunders and Green-Beckham is a valid (and popular) one, but many people seem to be forgetting some of the more important details regarding the timeline.