Miss. St.’s Arnett rips NCAA as TE ruled ineligible

North Carolina‘s Mack Brown isn’t the only college football coach irate with the NCAA because of its recent rulings regarding graduate transfers.

Mississippi State‘s Zach Arnett blasted the governing body on Friday after it ruled that graduate transfer Geor’quarius Spivey was ineligible to compete for the Bulldogs this season.

Spivey, a tight end who played the past two seasons at TCU, was ruled ineligible by the NCAA because he enrolled in classes at TCU for spring semester and then dropped them after the university’s drop deadline. Spivey told ESPN that he was told to enroll in the classes by his academic advisor and then to drop them after deciding to transfer to Mississippi State.

Spivey earned a bachelor’s degree in general studies from TCU in December 2022. He’s on track to earn a second degree in agriculture business from Mississippi State in December.

Spivey learned that his final appeal to the NCAA had been denied two days before last week’s season opener against Southeast Louisiana.

“We’re talking about a guy who’s graduated with his four-year degree,” Arnett told ESPN. “Look at the number of grad transfers playing across the country this year. Spivey graduated from TCU, obviously they played in the national title game, and so that goes into the second week of January.

“I think it’s a joke. I think it’s a joke that he’s not being allowed to play his final year of eligibility. Because they’re saying of some technicality, which TCU admitted that they had a flaw in their systems, and that they support him in his eligibility this year.”

Spivey, from Monroe, Louisiana, signed with Mississippi State in 2018 and started five games the next two seasons. He transferred to TCU before the 2021 season because then-Bulldogs coach Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense didn’t utilize tight ends. He started three games for the Horned Frogs in 2021 and had 11 catches for 136 yards with one touchdown last season.

Spivey said he had to wait a couple of weeks to talk to Horned Frogs coach Sonny Dykes about his future role with the team. By the time he decided to return to Mississippi State, the deadline for dropping classes had already passed. But Spivey said his academic adviser told him he would remain eligible if he dropped the courses.

In Feb. 27 text messages Spivey shared with ESPN, his mother, Angela Spivey, asked Dr. K.C. Mendez, then TCU’s director of football academic services, about obtaining a transcript that showed the classes had been dropped.

Mendez responded: “I am working with compliance to ensure once I drop him he’s going to be in the appropriate spot for eligibility.”

On March 2, Mendez sent an email to Geor’quarius Spivey that said, “Your courses have been dropped.”

“He went to the correct person to go to,” Angela Spivey said. “That was their job, and this happened. I just don’t have any understanding of it. I’m hurt. I know my son is hurt. But we, as his family, are extremely hurt, too. Like I say, this has been my baby’s goal ever since he was 4 years old. I’ll never forget it.”

Angela Spivey said that when her son was 4 years old, she asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He told her that he wanted to be an NFL player and a doctor.

“Well, come on, son,” she told him. “We’re going to go for it.”

Mississippi State athletic director Zac Selmon told ESPN that the school didn’t learn about Spivey’s dropped classes until May.

“Spivey’s situation, in my opinion, is just a direct reflection of how our systems failed the kid,” Selmon said. “And he trusted people that he saw as authoritative adult figures in the room. And then now, unfortunately, you don’t put a face to the young man, how good he’s doing. You take it to an arbitrary committee within the NCAA, and they’ve got a hundred things on their day-to-day job plate at their institutions, so it’s hard to really get a fair shake at that.

“You’re seeing it all around the country, and I get there’s tough cases. People are always trying to get a competitive advantage, but there’s also some cases that are common sense. And the NCAA, in my opinion, because of the way that it’s structured and the governance, has failed a lot of young people to opportunities.”

Selmon said that if the Bulldogs had known Spivey had dropped the courses, they would have had him enroll in classes at Mississippi State to maintain his eligibility.

“We didn’t want him to have to pay money out of his own pocket to take classes he didn’t need,” Selmon said. “Had we known and had things been updated in real time, we could have fixed the situation on our end too.”

In September 2022, the NCAA Division I Council voted to allow graduate students to enter the transfer portal at any time. Undergraduate student-athletes must enter the transfer portal during sport-specific transfer windows.

Last month, Purdue defensive back Jamari Brown, a graduate transfer, left the Boilermakers during preseason practices. He transferred to Mississippi State five days later and is eligible to play for the Bulldogs this season. Mississippi State is his third school; he originally signed with Kentucky. Former Oregon State running back Jamious Griffin transferred to Ole Miss as a graduate transfer Aug. 4.

“That’s the insane thing about this,” Arnett said. “They’re ruling Spivey on a technicality that he’s ineligible to play his final year of eligibility, and we have guys transferring right up until fall camp, or even after they’ve started fall training camp, and they’re at new schools eligible to play and playing. What in the hell has the NCAA done to screw up this system?”

Arnett’s comments come a day after Brown ripped the NCAA for ruling Kent State transfer Tez Walker ineligible. Walker attempted to get a two-time transfer waiver because he wanted to attend a school closer to home because of mental health challenges and the fact his first school, FCS program, North Carolina Central, didn’t play football during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever been more disappointed in a person, a group of people, or an institution than I am with the NCAA right now,” Brown said in a statement. “It’s clear that the NCAA is about process and it couldn’t care less about the young people it’s supposed to be supporting. Plain and simple, the NCAA has failed Tez and his family and I’ve lost all faith in its ability to lead and govern our sport.”

Arnett and Selmon said they’d do everything they can to support Spivey. He was on the sideline for Mississippi State’s 48-7 victory last week.

“They’re not the ones who have to look the kid in the face and tell him, ‘Hey, your appeal’s been denied, your athletic career is done,'” Arnett said. “It is really easy. It’s really easy to operate as a big giant bureaucracy, no different than the federal government or the IRS, and hand down these rulings. They’re not the ones who have to inform the person of the unfortunate news.

“They just send back some bureaucratic reply to your compliance department, and then it gets communicated to you as the coach, ‘Hey, call in so-and-so and tell him he’s ineligible.’ But if you put out some BS mission statement about you’re all about the health and well-being of the student-athlete and support the student-athlete experience, well, your actions kind of speak louder than your words there on this one, NCAA.”