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"Bamiro dodged draft by accident

Michael Bamiro has done what John Elway, Eli Manning and countless others wish they could've done — albeit unintentionally.

The Stony Brook University offensive tackle, who thought he was headed into his senior season this fall and last week was named a first-team FCS All-America selection by Sports Network, has been declared ineligible by the NCAA and also ruled ineligible for the NFL's supplemental draft because he's not an underclassman, thus making him a free agent who can sign with any team, sources have told FOX Sports.

Which means Bamiro is, by many accounts, the first player to dodge the NFL draft.

It's a quirky development that, sources say, began to formulate in the spring when Bamiro learned from his coaches that a waiver to give him another year of eligibility was going to be denied by the NCAA because Bamiro attended the University of Pittsburgh in 2008. Even though he didn't play football at Pitt, the clock on his eligibility started ticking.

The 6-foot-8, 335-pound Bamiro then decided he wanted to play football, so he transferred to Stony Brook, where one of his brothers (David) was once a linebacker, while another (Solomon) played basketball. (Solomon, known as "Bam Bam," is now a member of the Harlem Globetrotters.)

Michael Bamiro sat out the 2009 season with a redshirt designation after transferring. In 2010, he stepped in as the Seawolves' starting right tackle, a position he held for three seasons. Bamiro, a first-team All-Big South selection last season, was expecting to stay there in 2013, only to learn his college career was over and that he wouldn't be subject to the supplemental draft.

Teams can now get a player with the skills to be drafted without having to give up a pick to do so. Bamiro will hold a workout for teams this Thursday in Medford, N.J., a source told FOX Sports.

"You can't coach his pure size, his hands, the length of his arms," Stony Brook coach Chuck Priore told Newsday in 2011.

"He's got his basketball brother's athleticism. This kid is nimble on his feet. I think the world is his oyster, potentially."

Former NFL offensive lineman Billy Conaty is one of the agents representing Bamiro, who is training with former Philadelphia Eagles offensive tackle Tra Thomas.

"He's huge. He has hands twice the size of mine, and I'm 6-3," Conaty said. "The biggest thing teams love about him is he can bend well. At that size, being able to bend well and redirect is huge. His ceiling is a lot higher than most people's."

Conaty is expecting at least a dozen teams at the workout with a few more scrambling to get a scout there.

An NFC personnel director whose team will attend Bamiro's workout told FOX Sports last week, "He's a (good) prospect. Good size and ability. He'd probably be a fifth- or sixth-round pick, though I don't know how much tape people have watched of him."

Therein lies the downside of Bamiro's situation.

Being declared a free agent is seemingly advantageous because he gets to pick his team as opposed to being sent to whichever club selects him. That's a scenario Elway and Manning basically created by forcing their way to a team other than the one that had the first overall pick. Former Seattle Seahawks linebacker Brian Bosworth also sent out a list in advance of the 1987 supplemental draft, indicating the teams for which he wanted to play. The Seahawks weren't on that list, and Bosworth played for them anyway.

Former Los Angeles Raiders running back Bo Jackson refused to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after the team selected him first overall in 1986. Jackson was irate when a visit set up by the team cost him his NCAA eligibility, so he played baseball that season. One year later, he was entered into the NFL draft and was selected by the Raiders in the seventh round.

Elway, Manning, Bosworth, Jackson and others would've loved to have Bamiro's situation as their own.

But the freedom Bamiro is enjoying is offset by the fact he is trying to find a job at a time when teams are in offseason mode. This year's supplemental draft – which takes place Thursday – isn't stocked with talent, so many personnel executives haven't done their homework, especially with Bamiro, whom they didn't even know would be available.

Some teams are also out of rookie-pool money and unable to give Bamiro a signing bonus. Another option to entice him to sign, though, would be to guarantee his base salary for this upcoming season and possibly beyond. That's where the advantages of Bamiro's situation begin.

Bamiro also appears to be making some history here. Though some players have entered the NFL without being drafted (the Philadelphia Eagles' Vince Papale of "Invincible" fame and New Orleans Saints returner Michael Lewis, a former beer-truck driver, come to mind), indications are no player with a draftable grade has slipped past the draft the way Bamiro has.

Technically, Bamiro was eligible for April's entry draft and went through undrafted. The reason he slipped past every team is because no one realized he was eligible.

Now, he's eligible for any team – to sign, not to draft."{
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That means they've lost all 3 1st team AAs on offense they had from last yr + their All Big South QB. They were already (according to the CAA Preview) returning the least amount of starters (11) in the CAA. Now make that 10, including only 4 on offense.

yes but SB gets 5 decent FBS transfers including O-lineman from Pitt 4starts.

Starting QB is gone, but they're a running team anyway. returning 9 starts for 2 players at tight end.

And with 4 OL returning and adding Pitt transfer, SB offense should be just fine.

The NCAA Clearinghouse should have told him that from the get-go. Since THEY are the ones to screw up here, I'd say the RIGHT thing to do in THIS case is to grant him an extra year...IF he wants it.

Kids pay for regulatory screw-ups. STUPID!!!!!

This is a rule every school knows. This isn't an obscure rule. You have 5 years from the second you step on campus...every school knows that.

I'd the d2 and d3 schools that recruited me knew it,sb did too

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clenz makes a good point. While I STILL think the Clearinghouse should have communicated this to the kid when he first started playing, if SBU has any cajones, they should dip into their 5th-year tuition fund (most schools have them) and pay for his degree completion if he hasn't finished yet. If it's THEIR fault, they should pony up....

SuperHornet wrote:clenz makes a good point. While I STILL think the Clearinghouse should have communicated this to the kid when he first started playing, if SBU has any cajones, they should dip into their 5th-year tuition fund (most schools have them) and pay for his degree completion if he hasn't finished yet. If it's THEIR fault, they should pony up....

If he hasn't' finished in 5 years it's his fault.

I went to a private school for a semester and transfered from there. Out of the 15 credits I took there only 3 transferred because of the set up of the credit system vs a regular set up, I went to a CC for a year and a half, and then to UNI. I graduated in 4.5 years having never took a summer class. It could have easily been 4 had I taken 15 credits a couple more times or did my internship at the same time as other classes instead of at the end (re: I was done with classes in 4 and did an internship my last semester to finish the program)...essentially graduated in 3.5 years with 124 credit hours while working 36 hours per week....

I know that football takes up a lot of time, but lets not act like he couldn't have finished in 5 years - as a matter of fact he is a journalism major....I looked at SBU's journalism program. It's set up for a 4 year program https://journalism.cc.stonybrook.edu/?page_id=1087" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; averaging 15 credits per semester with no summer classes. That's standard. Let's say he couldn't take 15 in the fall, so he only took 12....summer classes would easily fill that gap.


IF...and I don't know if he did or didn't....if he didn't' graduate yet, that's on him not SBU. There are about a dozen UNI players I can name from the last 5-7 years alone that have graduated with in undergrad degree and gotten their masters degree (or been working on it) during their 5 years on campus.

clenz wrote:This is a rule every school knows. This isn't an obscure rule. You have 5 years from the second you step on campus...every school knows that.

I'd the d2 and d3 schools that recruited me knew it,sb did too

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And you are a full time student.

clenz wrote:This is a rule every school knows. This isn't an obscure rule. You have 5 years from the second you step on campus...every school knows that.

what if you inadvertantly walk across part of campus without realizing it?

JayJ79 wrote:

clenz wrote:This is a rule every school knows. This isn't an obscure rule. You have 5 years from the second you step on campus...every school knows that.

what if you inadvertantly walk across part of campus without realizing it?

Too bad. Clock starts even then, bitch.

That depends, clenz. UOP has a four-year guarantee (five years for engineering because of two mandatory internships), but that depends on actually doing what your faculty advisor says. I'm sure other schools have a similar policy. But the required classes have to be available at the point in a student's program where he has to take them. If you have a major that's just a list of classes (like history or English), you're probably fine no matter what you do. But if you have a technical major where certain classes are pre-requisites for others, and you're continually wait-listed and can't even get in if you crash, without that guarantee, you're screwed. THAT is NOT the student's fault, and that's why UOP developed their guarantee. Of course, as a smaller school, they can do that. You get those huge lecture-hall classes at a larger school like Cal that are full and the school refuses to start another section because they "can't afford" to pay the instructor/TA, that's on the school, NOT the student. Remember, there ARE professors out there that are anti-athletics and will go out of their way to stiff a football player (or any athlete, really) if there's a question of crashing the class.

Of course, if the student didn't pay attention to his faculty advisor and his plan of study, then HE's the one who screwed up....

WWII wrote:

clenz wrote:This is a rule every school knows. This isn't an obscure rule. You have 5 years from the second you step on campus...every school knows that.

I'd the d2 and d3 schools that recruited me knew it,sb did too

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And you are a full time student.

This. I think the debate wasn't about the rule, it was about whether he was full time that first semester at Pitt. The NCAA this past spring decided he was.

My GUESS is that at some point during his first semester he decided to play football and dropped several classes to only part time status. The NCAA probably ruled that the withdrawals on his transcript count as credits taken putting him at 12+ credits, thus taking away a year of eligibility.

Saw that he signed with the Eagles. Good signing all the way around.