On Tuesday, millennials got one step closer to a victory.

Why? According to CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd, a proposal to allow student-athletes to transfer without restriction after their coach leaves is picking up steam. In that scenario, student-athletes could play the following season at another school without having “a year in residence,” which is the current NCAA rules require.

There is, however, one restriction. That is, a player cannot follow the departed coach to his new destination. In other words, Deondre Francois wouldn’t have been able to leave Florida State for Texas A&M after Jimbo Fisher did so at the end of the 2017 season.

Still, it would be considered a major win for the player. Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard went as far as to tell CBS Sports that “for the first time ever in college athletics, the student-athlete is empowered.”

It would be an obvious move for those who hated that coaches could pick up and leave whenever they want while players had to sit out a year to transfer and potentially have a list of restricted schools. Some will claim that a move like this should’ve happened years ago.

What if it did happen years ago? What if the proposed rule was instituted in the beginning of the 2015 calendar year. We would have seen the effects once the 2015 season ended and the coaching carousel began.

The college football season that we had in 2017 likely would have been wildly different. The entire landscape could have been different than the one we know today. That’s not to say that every star player would have been on a different team, but just think about how many new coaches there have been at Power 5 schools since 2015.

Here’s the list of every Power 5 school that made at least one coaching change in the past 3 years:

ACC

  • Florida State
  • Miami
  • Syracuse
  • Virginia
  • Virginia Tech

Big 12

  • Iowa State
  • Oklahoma
  • Texas
  • Baylor

Big Ten

  • Illinois
  • Indiana
  • Maryland
  • Minnesota
  • Nebraska
  • Purdue
  • Rutgers

Pac-12

  • Arizona
  • Arizona State
  • Cal
  • Oregon
  • Oregon State
  • UCLA
  • USC

SEC

  • Arkansas
  • Florida
  • Georgia
  • LSU
  • Mississippi State
  • Missouri
  • Ole Miss
  • South Carolina
  • Tennessee
  • Texas A&M

That’s 33 of the 64 Power 5 teams in college football. In other words, more than half of the biggest programs in the country made head coaching switches. It would take too long to count all of the All-Americans and future first-round picks who could have ended their college careers on different teams if they had no transfer restrictions.

What if Roquan Smith or Nick Chubb could have left and played anywhere (besides Miami) immediately after Kirby Smart replaced Mark Richt? Would Derrius Guice or D.J. Chark have transferred from LSU to play their final seasons elsewhere when Les Miles was fired? Is it possible that Francois and Cam Akers would have left Florida State after Fisher did so?

Credit: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports

It’s wild to think about some of those scenarios. Maybe Georgia doesn’t have anywhere close to the 2017 it had, and instead of dominating teams like Florida and Tennessee — both of whom changed coaches after getting demolished by the Dawgs — it shows that there isn’t much separation in the SEC East. Perhaps LSU’s offense would have been even worse and Ed Orgeron wouldn’t have lasted a full year in Baton Rouge. And without transfer restrictions after Fisher’s exit, FSU would have been a feeding frenzy unlike any other.

We’ll never know how exactly that would have all played out. For some of those guys, they would have stayed even if they could have played elsewhere the following season. The smart ones commit to a school and not a coach. As I just outlined, a Power 5 coach in today’s game is more likely to be gone by the time a recruit graduates.

Well, at least it did under the old set of rules. What this proposed transfer rule could do is give athletic directors pause if they’re thinking about pulling a quick trigger on a coach and paying a hefty buyout. After all, if they’re at risk of watching the entire roster have the option to suddenly transfer if they don’t like the new hire, that’s a huge thing to consider.

Herm Edwards might have had only a dozen players left by the time he arrived at Arizona State.

Also, can you imagine what that would look like with the new Early Signing Period? New coaches would have 3 weeks to assemble a new staff, a new recruiting class and basically a new roster. They could be handing out scholarships to any kid with a pulse. Sure, they’d get to turn over the roster quicker, but that would make for quite the uphill climb in Year 1.

There are issues that will need to be addressed with this new proposal. Athletic directors will make sure of it. Even though they’re giving up something, they’ll put wording in the proposal that protects against complete roster turnover in the event of a coaching change. Whether that’s limiting kids to one transfer in their college careers or providing a smaller window to officially declare a transfer (7 days after the new coach is hired), one has to think there will be certain regulations.

But at the very least, this shows that the NCAA recognizes that it’s fighting a losing battle. They’ve taken plenty of heat for treating student-athletes like employees while nomad, 7-figure salary coaches have all the power in the current system.

If and when this proposal is official, athletes everywhere will rejoice knowing that they’ll get more freedom than they’ve ever had. Who knows what kind of impact it could have 3 years from now?

Changes are coming, and the craziness in college football is just beginning.