Transfer Portal Problems

Over the past few years, federal legislation has completely transformed the look of college athletics.  One of the biggest changes is that student-athletes are no longer required to sit out a year if they transfer schools.  They can also transfer as many times as they want, all but eliminating the "student" part of student-athletes, as they're all essentially free agents every year, free to sign with whichever program offers them the most playing time or the best NIL deal (the NIL is another part of this seismic shift).

Recruiting has become a year-round job, and coaches aren't just recruiting freshmen.  Half their time is spent re-recruiting their own roster, hoping the current players will have incentive to stay.  Managing the transfer portal is a full-time responsibility.  So much so that coaches can't do the part of the job they enjoy--actually coaching!  And it has resulted in some high-profile coaching retirements, including Nick Saban and Jay Wright.

As a result of the transfer portal, we see college basketball teams with completely different rosters from one season to the next.  Since there's absolutely nothing stopping them from doing it, players will play at three or even four schools over the course of their career.  Whenever a coach leaves, the new coach has to rebuild the entire roster essentially from scratch (with the occasional exception of one or two guys).  (When Deion Sanders took over at Colorado, he brought in 80! new players through the transfer portal.)  Even coaches that don't change jobs can't build a program because of the constant turnover.

While it's still a relatively new thing and everyone's learning on the fly, there are numerous issues with the transfer portal that need to be addressed.  The biggest one, however, is the timing.  For some reason, the transfer portal opens while the season is still going.  Which, as you can imagine, wreaks havoc on rosters while also putting players in an unenviable position where they have to make a decision about their future while still thinking about their present.

Football players opting out of bowl games is another fairly recent phenomenon.  There are different reasons why players might choose to opt out, but entering the transfer portal has become one of the most common.  And it's not just a handful of players, either.  It's become more and more prevalent, affecting numerous rosters each season.

Last season, after not being selected for the College Football Playoff, Florida State had so many players opt out of the Orange Bowl that they took the field against Georgia with a completely different team than the one that had gone 13-0 up to that point.  It shouldn't have been a surprise, then, that they lost by a bowl-game record 60! points!  It was more like one of those early September guarantee games against an FCS opponent than the Orange Bowl.

Would they have had all those opt outs had they been picked for the CFP?  Probably not.  But that's not the point.  The point is that in the four weeks between the ACC Championship Game and the Orange Bowl, the Florida State roster was completely decimated by starters and other key players entering the transfer portal.  On the bright side, they at least still had enough players left to field a team in the Orange Bowl.  Which is more than I can say for Marshall.

Marshall was set to take on Army in this season's Independence Bowl, but informed the bowl committee over the weekend that they won't be able to participate.  Marshall won the Sun Belt Conference title, but their head coach left the next day to take the Southern Miss job.  That led to more than 25 players entering the transfer portal, not leaving them with enough to play the game. 

The Independence Bowl was obviously left scrambling to find a replacement, and fortunately Louisiana Tech was able to step in at the last minute.  Imagine if they hadn't!  The game likely would've had to be cancelled and Army really would've drawn the short end of the stick, seeing its season come to end not because of something it did, but because too many Marshall players transferred.  Not the best look!

Penn State, meanwhile, is gearing up for a College Football Playoff appearance.  The Nittany Lions will be without their backup quarterback, Beau Pribula, for however long their run is.  He announced that he's entering the transfer portal and, as a result, will be leaving the team, effective immediately.  While Pribula isn't a starter, he's played in every game this season and had a significant enough role in the offense that his absence will be felt.

In his Instagram post announcing his decision, Pribula hit the nail right on the head.  He wrote, "The current NCAA postseason model creates a challenge for student-athletes.  The overlapping CFP playoff & transfer portal timeline has forced me into an impossible decision."  Pribula doesn't want to abandon his teammates going into the most important games of the season, but he was left in a no-win situation.  It was either leave Penn State before the end of the season or risk not being able to transfer (which, if that's what he truly wants, he should absolutely have the ability to do).

It's telling that the transferring student-athlete can identify the problem when the NCAA seemingly can't (or, more likely, won't).  It isn't just players who are being put in an impossible situation.  Coaches are supposed to prepare for postseason games while simultaneously trying to figure out who on the team will actually be available to play in said game.  Which brings me to another major issue with the transfer portal calendar.

Football teams in bowl games or basketball teams in the NCAA Tournament are still in the middle of the season.  That's what they should be worried about.  Not the transfer portal.  Meanwhile, teams that didn't qualify for the postseason are already hitting the portal and getting a jump on reshaping their rosters.  As are their players.  So, the good teams and their players are indirectly penalized for their success because they're left playing catch-up in the transfer portal once the season finally does end (and, not to mention those poor assistant coaches who won't be able to take any time off after the season).

What's so frustrating about the whole process is that there's such an obvious solution.  The College Football Playoff field was announced on a Sunday afternoon.  The transfer portal opened on Monday.  Less than 24 hours later.  Before any team had played a single postseason game.  It's the same thing in basketball.  The transfer portal opens the day after Selection Sunday.  Why?

Seriously.  Why does the transfer portal open the day after NCAA selections are announced?  Especially when all of the best teams in the country will still be playing in the NCAA Tournament (or, in the case of football, a bowl game or the College Football Playoff)?  That unnecessarily puts players, coaches and teams in a tough situation that they don't need to be in.  Especially since there's absolutely no reason for the transfer portal to open so early.

If that sounds simple, that's because it is.  If they move the start of the transfer portal to 24 hours after the NCAA Tournament ends instead of 24 hours after the selections are announced, it would solve so many problems and make things so much easier for everyone.  Then you wouldn't have teams opting out of bowl games because they don't have enough players and you wouldn't have players leaving their teams with the season still going.  Like I said, simple.