I do believe there is a media bias, and am sure that Carvell has been waiting to raise this one for sure. That said, does he not have a point? I get why comparing Carter to Miller was apples to bananas, but why is this? To be honest, I applaud Richt for having a no restriction rule. As much as I would hate seeing some of our players go to our rival schools, why should a coach have any say over what school a kid can attend. Certainly, if a coach wants to leave and go coach for the rival, the kid has no say in that. Assuming they have to sit out a year, kids should be free to go where they want.
Of course, all that said, it is important to consider what the standard practice is, and that Tech coaches are less restrictive than a lot of programs.
First on Carvell, he is not making a point. This is clearly just a thoughtless line tagged on to increase clicks. No big deal imo.
Second, no he has no point anyway. Look at what Richt does over there at UGA. He tries to take somewhat of a higher road than most SEC and factory head coaches, probably because of his personal ethics and basic attempts to be a decent person. This means that he does not really oversign on NSD and he does actually have some kind of rules he is willing to ultimately enforce as regards drug (marijuana) use with penalties for positive tests, as well as does give suspensions and eventually dismissals for conduct at a pace and rate
far beyond the rest of the SEC and most factories. He does all that despite a fan base that has a huge contingent which says he should stop testing for marijuana, or handing down these suspensions, etc. This noisy contingent constantly complains that Richt is too willing to "handcuff" himself with enforcing team rules and such when the rest of the conference does not do this.
This is all nice that Richt is more ethical than a typical factory coach. It is also impressive he can consistently compete in such a dirty conference when you see the fanbase of UF run Muschamp out right quick for coming in and being told to clean up the program and then actually doing so. So how does Richt compete while trying to stay somewhat "clean"?
Let's put to the side institutional chicanery that goes on at UGA by its network of recruiting bagmen as well as exploitation of student-athletes by defrauding them of an education and meaningful degree. What Richt does is he has an open door policy in recruiting where he takes any and all top prospects w/o regard to literacy, character, judgment, etc.
This let's him compete because he knows that many of them will fail out or get arrested or not live by team rules and he will thus have the turnover necessary to sign 30 a year without oversigning (and he can selectively discipline based on depth chart). That lets him generate competition, get infusions of youth at the skill positions (especially dealing with injuries), and compete with the other factories. But if you take this approach then you do not want to restrict the movement
out of players who are not cutting it on the depth chart . . . you
need their path out of Athens to be as uncomplicated as possible!
It only makes perfect sense that Richt must have an open-door "out" policy on transfers to go with his open-door "in" recruiting.