For most college football programs, the end of one regular season marks the immediate beginning of another.
In years past, schools would decide on staff changes and focus on pursuing important recruits. Now, most of that has changed due to the transfer portal.
Since being introduced in October of 2018, the transfer portal has helped hundreds of student athletes find schools more ideal for their situations.
Originally, players would enter the transfer portal due to hardships and would have to petition to the NCAA their reasons for leaving. The committee would then determine when they could start playing again based on the reasons given.
Since 2021, sitting out a year has been revoked, so players can immediately begin playing after a transfer.
Unfortunately, like all good things, coaches and players alike have strayed away from its initial purpose and now use the portal as a way to recruit or become a “free agent”.
On top of the 45-day window of madness that is the transfer season, the introduction of Name, Image and Likeness rules have made college athletes even more likely to leave a school they originally committed to.
In my opinion, the transfer portal will affect college athletes more negatively than positively in the long run.
For one, the whole purpose for playing at a college is null and void if players aren’t thinking about their education. Moving around to multiple schools just for football may have a negative impact on their ability to learn and get a degree.
Additionally, I believe it hurts the progress of programs as a whole. If coaches don’t have most of the same unit from the year before, it’s hard to build a cohesion strong enough for a good team.
For example, look at SEC football teams and their transfers by the numbers. After the 2022 regular season, teams like Texas A&M and Florida had 25 and 19 players enter the transfer portal, respectively. Georgia only had one entry. See the difference?
And that’s just on the internal side. Externally, teams like Ole Miss and Missouri added 17 and 13 players from the transfer portal for the 2022 season. Georgia didn’t add a single one.
Yes, a lot has to do with coaching staff preferences and strategies, but I think there are a lot of underlying factors to success that the transfer portal currently hinders.
I do believe that players having the capability to transfer is important, and it can definitely provide benefits to both the players and programs involved; however, not in its current state.
Sports at the collegiate level should not waver into any level higher or lower than what it’s at. If you open it up more, you’ll have free agency that is similar to professional levels, and the special aspects of collegiate sports will lose their value.
The love for one’s university and the game should outweigh the love of a paycheck, and if it continues to open up as it has, the transfer portal could cause more issues than it solves.
