By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Maybe I’m wrong to think the NCAA should stand for No Clue At All.

Maybe I’m wrong to accuse the NCAA decision makers of being too rigid, too stubborn, too controlling and too old-fashioned.

And maybe I’m wrong to accuse the NCAA of favoring head coaches over student-athletes because there are signs that the NCAA is loosening its grip on the student-athlete.

News broke on Wednesday that the NCAA has passed a rule allowing football players to play up to four games in a season and still be able to redshirt.

And then beginning in October, student-athletes who want to transfer to another school cannot be blocked by their current head coach and school, and they don’t need permission to transfer. Transfers will be listed on a national transfer database, allowing other coaches to contact them directly.

The beauty of the new redshirt rule is that it will allow coaches to play their true freshmen without using a season of eligibility, as long as they don’t surpass four games.

Coaches also will have a chance to reward true freshmen who show significant progress during practice by allowing them to play in up to four games while maintaining their freshmen status.

Instead of four seasons of eligibility, a college football player will have 4 1/3 seasons of eligibility under the new rule.

Every college football program will benefit from the new redshirt rule, but especially the developmental programs like Iowa because it will create more depth, more options and there will be less pressure to play injured with available reinforcements on the bench.

As for the transfer rule, it’s about time the NCAA gives the student-athlete more flexibility. Coaches can come and go as they please with no repercussions, while student-athletes until this rule was passed were at the mercy of their head coach.

Iowa fans were reminded of that when Jarrod Uthoff transferred from Wisconsin to Iowa after his freshman season in 2012, but not without controversy.

Wisconsin initially blocked Uthoff from transferring to any school in the Big Ten Conference or the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Former Badger head coach Bo Ryan came off as being petty, vindictive and selfish.

A resolution was eventually reached, but Uthoff’s case showed just how much control a head coach had on the student-athlete.

Professional sports cater to the athlete, while college sports cater to head coaches, especially in football and men’s basketball.

These new rule changes will help to lessen the imbalance between coaches and student-athletes.

And that’s long overdue.

News also broke on Wednesday that the NCAA has approved adding three new bowl games, including one that will be played in late December at Wrigley Field in Chicago and hosted by the Chicago Bears beginning in 2020.

With the addition of three more bowls that the NCAA will sanction, that pushes the total to 43 bowl games involving 86 teams.

To put that in perspective, there are only 64 teams in the five power five conferences and all but 20 of them played in a bowl game last season.

There used to be a time not so long ago when weather was a huge factor in establishing a bowl game.

Wrigley Field is an incredible place to visit in the summer for a baseball game, but can be chilly and windy in the spring.

So imagine a football game in late December between two teams with 6-6 records and with the wind howling off the shore of Lake Michigan?

Yikes.

We saw something similar when Iowa played Boston College in the 2017 Pinstripe Bowl in late December at Yankee Stadium in New York City. It was an open press box that caused fingers and toes to be numb by halftime.

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz says there is no such thing as a bad bowl game. But that belief is being tested with bowl games now being played on baseball fields in cold weather and with more than two-thirds of the teams qualifying for bowl games.