Off Campus: Why did Saint Joseph's deny this transfer request?

When St. Joseph's basketball player Todd O'Brien requested a release to play the sport for one season as a graduate student at another school, the easy thing for the university to do would have been to give it to him.

Seems as though it would have even been the smart thing, too, if St. Joseph's had been looking ahead to the court of public opinion.

But what about the right thing? Here, it gets murky.

O'Brien is this week's poster child for athlete's rights, or lack of them in the NCAA, since St. Joseph's declined to give him that release. He is at Alabama-Birmingham, practicing with the team, but he can't play this season because the NCAA turned down his appeal. On Monday, O'Brien blasted St. Joe's and coach Phil Martelli in a first-person SI.com piece, and journalists around the country took to their computers to stomp on St. Joe's, which isn't giving an inch on this issue and, in fact, issued a statement Monday that ended by saying the school "considers the matter closed."

O'Brien's attorney, Don Jackson, said in an interview Tuesday night that they are considering suing Martelli and St. Joseph's in Alabama court, that the school has offered "no valid justification" for keeping O'Brien from playing.

There seems to be more to this case than we know right now, since at least five other St. Joe's players have transferred in the last three years, including several others this year, and it's my understanding that the school granted a release in every other case. The Hawks have lost a couple of top players to transfers over the years and always signed the release. O'Brien himself was a transfer into the school, from Bucknell. How could St. Joseph's take him in but not let him out?

After starting 28 games in 2009-10, the 6-foot-11 center didn't start any games last season and was 10th on the team in minutes played. O'Brien said he was allowed to take part in the graduation ceremony at St. Joseph's but still had to complete three courses in the summer to officially graduate.

O'Brien, who told St. Joe's of his decision to transfer in July, didn't hold back in his portrayal of Martelli, making him out to be spiteful, writing of the coach: "After calling me a few choice words, he informed me that he would make some calls so that I would be dropped from my summer class and would no longer graduate."