But whatever the "narrative" is, there has to be some kind of hardship involved, right? Say a kid goes to a school and after a couple of years it becomes obvious he isn't going to crack the depth chart. If the kid makes an appeal to play immediately, and the school backs it, you're saying that consistency is all it takes to get it approved?
I thought there had to be some kind of extenuating hardship circumstance (i.e., not "the coach left" or "I'm not starting" or "another player just transferred in and is going to take my job") to get the NCAA to approve these waivers to play immediately.
Unless there's something we don't know (which is certainly possible), Martell didn't appear to have a strong case at all for immediate eligibility. In fact, he appeared to have no case whatsoever, at least based on how the NCAA has treated incidents like that in the past. Yet he got it and got it rather quickly, as have numerous other guys, yet there are other guys like Solomon that still haven't heard anything 5 days before the season starts. It makes no sense. I don't think he did a waiver, but why couldn't Jacob Eason, for example, get immediate eligibility when Jake Fromm took his job? I don't even remember that being discussed as a possibility at the time. I see that as no different as Martell leaving once Fields arrived, or Fields leaving because it was obvious he wasn't going to supplant Fromm.
