So far this spring, two Oklahoma State players who have yet to graduate and had previously transferred into the Cowboys program have put their names into the NCAA’s transfer portal once again.  Oklahoma State coach Mike Boynton told both that they likely would have to sit out next season at their new schools, since they’d already used their one-time transfer exemption. In recent years, the NCAA has been lenient about granting immediate eligibility waivers to players who transferred more than once. But last August, new, stricter rules were put in place to make those waivers much more difficult to obtain.

The two players — Moussa Cisse and Woody Newton — listened to Boynton’s words of caution. They decided to transfer anyway.

“They think that they’ll figure it out,” Boynton told The Athletic. “They’ll get enough sympathy publicly by some sob story coming out in the press and somebody latching onto it on social media that they’ll be viewed as a victim somehow and that’ll all be taken care of. And, in some ways, I can see how they’d think that. We don’t have any precedents that the NCAA, especially recently, is going to stand up and try to hold anybody accountable to anything.”

Newton and Cisse — the latter of whom was the 2022 Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year and who did not respond to requests to comment for this story — are among a group of 20 high-major players seeking to transfer for a second time and who have spent three or fewer years in college, meaning those players are unlikely to be graduating this spring or summer. (Graduate transfers are still able to play right away.)

The belief in college basketball circles is that most of those players — which includes some big names like former Texas/Texas Tech wing Jaylon Tyson and former LSU/Georgetown guard Brandon Murray, who signed with Ole Miss — are entering the portal under the assumption that they will play right away.

“I think every coach in the country is sitting on edge and wants to see how the NCAA is going to handle this, because it’s very important,” said a high-major coach who was granted anonymity so he could speak freely on the topic and not jeopardize recruiting relationships. “And I don’t think a lot of coaches have a lot of faith in the NCAA enforcing what they say.”

This coach’s skepticism — and he’s not alone — is based off the NCAA’s past handing of waivers. When the NCAA ratified the one-time transfer exemption in April 2021, the point of the rule was to allow players transferring for the first time to be eligible right away at their new school. This made things easier on the NCAA, which had become so inundated with waiver requests that its response was basically to sign off on every one.