If the kids have signed they are on the hook unless the school lets them out. The "olympic" sports have been very lenient on this over the years, and some conferences even have "rules" on that sort of thing. The Va Tech issue is that historically the olympic sports have let kids out of their commitment released them to play, and in that case allegedly the kids even asked "what if coach leaves" and allegedly VT said we'll let you out. As non revenue sport coaches feel the pressure to win more and more they are putting more and more restrictions on transfers like VA Tech did. Missouri recently ran into a VB issue I think where a kid was a fourth year senior and wasn't going to play much there and asked for a transfer. Allegedly Missouri limited their approval that would let her play immediately to a very limited number of schools, something like no Big 12's, no Big 10's, not school ranked in the top 25 the year before and no school that had made the NCAA Tourney in the last two years. They hadn't ever done that before. Before kids had been given unconditional releases. (This isn't meant to be facts about the specifics of the Mizzou situation, just my understanding generally)