My part of the team project will focus on the impact on the family of athletes who transfer. This will take an approach that is broader than just the athletic effect for the transfers.
I am interested in considering how often families cite academic reasons or parent career changes if a family moves a long distance away so their kid can go to a different school. If a parent gets a new job in a different state or city, does the family intentionally choose a house in a certain area so the athlete can go to a certain school? Things like buying houses and changing family life are major decisions, and I’m interested to see how uprooting a family becomes justified due to the quest for a scholarship. In Georgia, do football players ever move and live with a host family so they can be on a different team? (This happens a good bit in gymnastics.)
How often do players feel like transferring directly resulted in better athletic performance and tangible positive outcomes, such as college scholarships? Do they consider leaving their old school (with familiar friends and teachers) worth it? Is there any way to quantify this… probably not because we can never know how successful an athlete would have been if he had stayed at his original school.
In order to tell the story from this angle, I will need to talk to the athletes, their parents and their siblings. I also think it could be effective to use a map of some sort to depict how far athletes are commuting or moving in order to attend their new school.