As transfer portal movement ratchets up even more in the offseason, it’s worth asking if the state of the transfer portal in college football is sustainable or beneficial.
Scores of players look to find second football homes at a moment’s notice, and completely surprising their comment teams. Each player has their own motivations, no doubt, ranging from dissatisfaction with playing time to a team’s lack of success, or even bigger NIL opportunities. While it’s rarely explicitly clear why a player chooses to jump into the portal and look for a new home, it’s clear that in its current state, the system of NCAA players finding new football homes is a scattered and messy affair for both players and football programs.
So it begs the question: What are the biggest problems with the transfer portal? To start, there’s the instant impact it has on the programs who are losing a player, and no heads up for a program means they could be blindsided with the departure of a critical player without the means to replace him quickly. To make matters more complicated, coaches upgrading their rosters quickly through the portal may displace quite a few current scholarship players, forcing players to leave under short notice and hurriedly look for a place to continue their playing careers.
Once NIL gets factored in, movement becomes even more frantic as players move to better their financial positions perhaps more than their professional preparedness. Coaches across the country have bemoaned constant NIL tampering as the reason for the glut of portal movement. Is there any possible fix for the disarray of college football player movement? Does the NCAA have the teeth to produce and enforce solutions? Can this cat be put back in the bag at all?
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