Good Mornin’! Good Mornin’!
The transfer portal. It’s definition from the NCAA – “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.”
In layman’s terms – if you don’t like your coach, your situation, your teammates then go somewhere else.
In my terms – I don’t like it. I think kids should stick it out. Get rid of the participation medals. I think if you’re gonna transfer and you’re in D1 then you have to go to DII or DIII or NAIA. If you’re DII then you either go up or down, not lateral. In other words, dance with the one that brung you.
I know things don’t always work out. coaches move on but I’m old school. You sign to play for a school, a university, a college to be part of a tradition and form relationships and friends that will last you a lifetime. You go to college for more than just sports and if you keep hopping around, you’re going to do that all of your life in jobs and relationships.
That’s the message the world is giving out. You don’t like this, then go get this or that. I don’t ever remember my parents asking me what I wanted to eat for breakfast, dinner or supper. I got what I got and ate some of it and when I got old enough, I drove myself to Mr. Quick for BBQ chicken sandwiches and Peasoup’s when I had money.
Kids today have too many choices from underwear to hamburgers. I’m not an adventurous eater. I tell folks that I know what I like. Why should I stray from it? But back to the portal. In 2019-2020 there were 302,000 student athletes competing in DI and DII. More than 15,000 put their names in the Transfer Portal.
That’s only five percent of all athletes. Sure does seem like a whole lot more. But of those 15,000, more than 2/3 were DI athletes and 5,000 were DII. Of that 10,000, 25 percent were football players and 50 percent of the 10K were walk-ons trying to get scholarship offers from other schools. I reckon it’s a good thing for them then. That’s about the only plus I see – getting somebody to pay for your college.
Now I know there are success stories. Troy Aikman went to Oklahoma and broke his leg playing against Miami then transferred to UCLA but had to sit out a year. Henry Steele was highly recruited at Western Colorado but the coach didn’t like him and wouldn’t play him and when he eventually had to, Henry lit up the opposition and then famously told his coach, “All the way up with a red hot poker. I can play anywhere I want.”
Henry got the girl but we never heard the end of the fictional movie story about how he played after Western Colorado. No movie was made about that move. Perhaps it didn’t work out and he lost the girl later and sat on the end of the bench wishing he’d stayed with the one that brung him. We’ll never know but my advice, stay with your school and your friends and your education, not your coach.
Dismantle the transfer portal, except for Walk-ons. Amen.
