Starting Season 100, the National Collegiate Athletic Association will no longer allow its student-athletes to see action in various professional leagues.
NCAA management committee member Hercules Callanta of Lyceum of the Philippines University said they will revert to their old rule of barring athletes from participation in professional leagues like the Premier Volleyball League and the Maharlika Pilipinas Basketball League under the special guest license issued by the Games and Amusement Board.
From 2020 to 2022, the country’s oldest collegiate league allowed its athletes to play professionally to help them alleviate the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic to their respective families.
With that, players like Most Valuable Player Will Gozum joined the Quezon Huskers in the MPBL in preparation for the NCAA Season 99 while the core of College of Saint Benilde women’s volleyball team also campaigned in the PVL under the banner of Farm Fresh.
On the contrary, the NCAA’s rival league — the University Athletic Association of the Philippines — retained its regulations on players wanting to compete in professional leagues.
Now, the practice will no longer be allowed with the league claiming that the pandemic is over so student-athletes have to stay in school or face the risk of losing their amateur status.
“It was a temporary policy to allow our NCAA players to play as guests in professional leagues,” Callanta told Daily Tribune in an interview.
“This helped the players because there were no sports leagues allowed then except for professional players. It was a way to help them since they are mostly based in the provinces so we allowed them to play without jeopardizing their eligibility.”
Callanta added that it was supposed to be implemented this season but they agreed to give student-athletes one more year to transition.
“Last season, it was discussed that we will revert to the former policies because the pandemic is gone but we allowed it for one more season. We agreed to still allow our players to use their SGL in Season 99,” Callanta said.
Callanta, however, stressed that players may still join other leagues, like those in various barangays, provided that they are not classified as professional tournaments and will not be done while the NCAA season is ongoing.
“When you are in the NCAA, you have to inform us of the leagues that you will join just to be sure we can guide our players from pro leagues. We have to ask the Games and Amusement Board if a league is professional or not because we want to safeguard our players,” Callanta said.
“As long as the ligang-labas is amateur, that’s okay provided it is not within the period between the eligibility for basketball and the last game of the basketball season.”
With the massive player movement in the offseason due to collegiate teams’ recruitment, Callanta said the mancomm is also contemplating the possibility of shrinking the residency from one year to just one semester.
If approved by the NCAA Policy Board, the policy will give the schools a bit of a chance to entice up-and-coming players outside of the league to join their squads so that they could play right away.
“Actually, the law allows one-year residency. We saw with all the player movement around, we want to promote school spirit and loyalty to the school,” Callanta said.
“That’s the objective of scholastic athletics: To promote school spirit and loyalty. In the NCAA, we should promote the member schools in terms of their programs.”
The NCAA is set to celebrate its centennial season with all of the member schools as hosts for the first time in the league’s history.
