My take on the NCAA and "the Transfer Portal"
Really the NCAA reminds me a lot of the dad on Christmas eve You know the ones I am talking about. There is a bike cycle in a box with the words SOME assembled required and before you know it dad emerges from the garage wearing a toolbelt with a power tool in one hand and a toolbox in the other hand. Some dads should let mom do it!
Now I have never been a fan of this new rule. I also believed that the early signing period coaches wanted would be a bad thing as well forcing student athletes to make a choice out of fear instead of letting the process unfold to national signing day where a student athlete could have made a choice with a clear head. So coaches now are excited they have locked up some in December and can focus on a few for February.
Than here comes dad I mean the NCAA and they have the new transfer portal rule. Next thing you know the recruiting process gets turned upside down. Coaches are out recruiting their weakness make offers only to find out when they get back to campus that the number two QB entered the transfer portal the starting QB broke his leg playing beer pong and there is no one to throw the ball to you newly offered receivers.
So what is the transfer portal and how does it work ?
The Transfer Portal was created as a compliance tool to systematically manage the transfer process from start to finish, add more transparency to the process among schools and empower student-athletes to make known their desire to consider other programs.
Under the college transfer policy, when a student-athlete informs a school that he wishes to transfer, that institution has two business days to enter that athlete's name into a national transfer portal. Once the student-athlete's name is in the database, other coaches from any school can contact that individual. (thank you NCAA.org )
So it's no wonder coaches like Nick Saban of Alabama was concerned because it undid or opened the door to new problems when coaches thought the early signing period had locked up for them.
The transfer market has been growing steadily for more than a decade, and with it the concern for its unintended consequences. Alabama coach Nick Saban, as far back as 2017, advocated a "rule of civility" among coaches not to tamper with one another's players. "They have rules for that in the NFL," Saban said, "I think we should have rules for that in college football."
But a year later, the transfer portal went online, allowing players to formally signal their interest in changing schools and begin the process of recruitment. Then, in April, the NCAA approved a one-time waiver giving players the right to transfer once in their careers without the penalty of having to sit out a year of competition.
With that, the last guardrail was removed, the rules of engagement changed and the Era of Tampering began in earnest.
It's now blatant, the ACC assistant explained, and all the NCAA would have to do is check phone records to see what's really going on. But it won't, he added, because "I just don't think they want to do that stuff."
Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz scoffed at the idea of NCAA oversight. It would need to open an investigation, he said, and what good would that do when it still hasn't punished the coaches implicated in the FBI's investigation of college basketball?
"What kind of ferociousness is behind the enforcement if you have people on tape admitting to violations and they're still actively coaching?" Drinkwitz asked.
SMU coach Sonny Dykes brought up those wiretaps, too. He said he believes the NCAA's inaction is reinforcing the old adage, "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying."
"You want people in our sport to be ethical enough where they don't fall prey to that," Dykes said, "but ... you got to win and you got a high-pressure job and you have all these things and then all of a sudden, you look up and you go, 'Oh, they didn't punish anybody, and they're not going to punish me. So why not?'"
Stanford coach David Shaw has heard that rationale before, and he isn't buying
whether you go through a high school coach or a parent or a 'mentor' or street agent, I think it's disgusting," he said.
Bill Clark, who coaches Group of 5 power UAB, said his team played a game last season in which he knew for a fact that the opponent was actively recruiting one of his offensive skill players by reaching out to his former high school coach to signal their interest.
The player stayed, but a line had been crossed. Clark said point-blank, "That's tampering."
"We all hope we have a great culture," he said, "but you'd be lying to say it didn't worry you."
A Power 5 defensive coordinator told VanHaaren he wouldn't bother recruiting high school players if he was at a place like Ball State. If he helps turn that player into an all-MAC type, "A school like us is going to come take him."
Easier to avoid the heartache.
"Why spend all that time developing that kid only for him to leave me when I can go sign the kid who's unhappy as the fourth corner at a Power 5 school and he's a better player anyway?" he asked.
North Carolina coach Mack Brown said he's "absolutely" concerned about other repercussions.
"You play a team now and you don't go shake the coach's hand on the other side," Brown said. "You go shake the great tight end's hand. 'Hey, you look great, man. Aw, man, we should have recruited you. Wish you were here.'"
Brown paused.
"Well," he said, "now he can be. ( this information was compiled by Brandon Huffman who is the national recruiting editor for 247 sports and posted in an article titled HOW THE TRANSFER PORTAL CHANGED RECRUITING )
Many of you might still not seeing the point. So you coach Joe's college in no wheresville USA. Now for the first time you have got a team that can compete and your teams future is looking bright. So for what ever reason one of your future All Americans is unhappy so he bolts for what he perceives are greener pastures and enters the transfer portal and teleports to another team. Now your bright future looks pretty dim.
Student athletes use to learn many of life lessons from being involved in sports. Things like Leadership, Loyalty, patience, team work, dealing with adversity, getting along with different personalities, Team building, work ethic, rewards from your hard work. Now a coach is hard on you or you didn't get the starting spot or you were red shirted and now "I will just transfer" . That athlete I hope will still learn all those lessons but the way the transfer portal is set up today he can wait until he gets to the next school to learn those things. Please don't get me wrong I believe the student athlete should have the chance to learn and play sports at the school of his or her choice. I also believe a coach should not be able to stop a student athlete from entering the portal. I do believe the no deterrent's to entering the portal makes it so a student athlete doesn't have to sit down and look inside of themselves . That is where leaders are made, where you challenge yourself and you emerge with a decision that you clearly made looking at all the pros and cons. Those deterrents, rules, or whatever you wanted to call them removed makes jumping ship all to easy and in some cases sets an example to others that might not be good for a team.
On the coaches side of this I believe there is a very large % of schools knowingly breaking NCAA recruiting rules using pre portal contact to entice players to enter the portal to gain an unfair advantage in recruiting student athletes to their teams and schools . The NCAA rules committee has stated they will wait to see the numbers and kind of allow things to work themselves out. Basically telling coaches go a head and cheat, break all the rules you want because we have no Idea what were doing. Other coaches have to follow suit because they won't be able to compete and they will get fired for not winning games because Boosters and big business run college sports . There is no loyalty to the coaches that do it right. No job security for the Athletic Director (AD) that demand integrity from all his/her coaches. University Presidents turn a blind eye so they have a chance to leave their mark on the educational institution they serve knowing without $$$ college athletics bring in they would also be doing something else somewhere else.
Recruiting the High School student athlete. This is already a nightmare for parents of high school students athletes. In many cases parents feel forced to hire special coaches, trainers and nutritionists at the high school level to just give their student athlete a chance. Now these student athlete are not seeing as many recruiting visits from college coaches because ahead of them are players in the portal and players from 2 yr schools or Jr colleges and eve prep schools before they look at high school student athlete's. So mom and dad widen the recruiting circle by now adding Recruiters taking their student athlete to camps and combines out of state many across the country spending thousands of dollars in hopes their student athlete gets some looks.
So my question to my self is "did the NCAA look at anything before adding this one time no rules to transfer out of a school to student athletes ? There are a lot of if ands & but's to be looked at. Maybe some advance research studies. I mean no university changes their type of toilet paper they stock for school use without some insane million dollar study first. Yet with something this big it seems like at the pub around the corner from the NCAA headquarters there was a dart board with two business cards with a yes and a no written on them maybe a few beers to just blur things enough to make it somewhat challenging and a shady bartender in this seedy pub as the referee to the entire event. I mean in the words from Dr. McCoy "Spock are you insane"?
Here are some interesting numbers off the NCAA.ORG website. I will add because the NCAA broke out FCS and FBS numbers in their reporting and added the entire student body in the transfer portal data and used numbers already at their finger tips. So I will note where I change the numbers by pulling two line items together to give the reader a more transparent view of everything. Also 247 sports had numbers a year newer than numbers used by the NCAA so I also included their reporting to give the reader a true read.
According to the NCAA the % of both 2/4 and 4/4 transfers in Division 1 have increased each of the last three years. (2/4 & 4/4 is Jr college transfers to 4 year schools and 4/4 is from 4 year to 4 year school) The Up ticks in both 2/4 & 4/4 are occurring across a number of men's and women's sports.
After one down year men's Basketball has increased each of the last two years
2/4 transfers schools showed a large difference between men's and women's sports with 8.5% in men's sports compared to 2.8% in women's sports however in 4/4 transfer men at 7.5% and women at 7.3% was much closer.
Based off 2018/2019 numbers 2/4 men's Basketball 21.8% has the most athletes enter the portal Men's Baseball had 14.5% but adding FCS numbers and FBS together Men's Football came in # 2 at 18.8% Women's sports saw women's Basketball with 8.6% and women's softball with 5.7%
in 4/4 transfer portal numbers or % of
men's Soccer 18.6% men's Basketball 15.3% and men's Tennis at 13.8% and the NCAA goes on to list football at 4th and 6th place where football combine came in at 11.8% or third. On the women's side Beach Volleyball 18.4%, women's Tennis at 13.8 and women's Basketball at 11.7%
Now in 2 and 4 year schools combine the numbers or % of student athlete's in the transfer portal really start to show some big numbers. combined men's football comes in at 30.7% with men's Basketball at 29.8%
According to 247 sports as of last week there were 1500 FBS players in the transfer portal. 964 of them had some sort of ranking meaning the vast number 500 or so were walk on's. of the 964 about 60% or 588 student athlete's were at this time uncommitted to a program Of the 557 transferring from a power 5 school 299 of them took a step down. Out of the remaining numbers about 1/3 or 86 student athletes took a step up or traded across. There are some we don't know the number but out of the 259 left many will be out of football all together and now understanding "the grass isn't always greener on the other side'!
I want to thank
* NCAA.ORG for posting numbers on their site *ADU and Eli Boettier
*247 sports for such a great group of writer's. *Brandon Huffman who is the national recruiting editor for 247 sports
*247 sports for such in depth recruiting information.
My name is Kenneth W Grover recruiter/sports photographer for curiouseyes007. I have been Blogging about the in and outs of recruiting for the last ten years. I won't hold back how I feel about the recruiting process and I won't hold back how I see an athlete's recruiting path. Curiouseyes007 telling you what you need to hear and not what you want to hear.
