Next week, Thursday will be a designated day off for the Colorado men’s basketball team.
That day, however, will not be a day off for seniors George King and Tory Miller-Stewart.
In the NCAA’s continuing efforts to regulate how many hours student-athletes devote to their athletic endeavors in a given week or season, a new rule was implemented this year curtailing the use of travel days counting as days off for players and their teams.
So while head coach Tad Boyle, King, and Miller-Stewart travel to San Francisco next week for the Pac-12 Conference media day, the remainder of the Buffaloes will enjoy a day off back in Boulder. However, it will not count as a day off for King and Miller-Stewart.
According to the rule, King and Miller-Stewart will be owed an off day that will need to be used any time during the season.
“The off days are really counted individually,” Boyle said. “The rest of our team gets a day off (next week). The new time demands that are ‘in the best interests of the student-athlete’ we have to deal with. We have to track them. We have to record them. They put that rule in and now it’s a lot more paperwork for us and things we have to think about rather than just, ‘Hey, that’s a day off for the rest of the team.’ They want to make sure those two guys have a day off somewhere down the road.”
In the Atlantic Coast Conference, Duke and North Carolina did not take any basketball players to the league’s media day to avoid the sort of “banked” day off facing the Buffs with King and Miller-Stewart after next week. The rule also seemingly has inconsistent applications. Boyle noted that after his club’s game on Dec. 22 against Iowa in Sioux Falls, S.D., his players will break for a couple days over the Christmas holiday. Yet while the travel day home for all the Buffs on Dec. 23 does not count as a day off, the day they return to campus, Dec. 26, does count as a day off.
“Tell me the logic there. I can’t figure it out,” Boyle said. “But that’s the rule. We have to know the rule, understand the rule, deal with the rule. But the day traveling home from Christmas, but the day traveling back to campus is a day off.”
Pat Rooney: rooneyp@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/prooney07
