This year, there are more athletes entering the transfer portal than ever before.
The Transfer Portal started in 2018, and it has then taken over football and other sports at the collegiate level. College football currently has over 2,000 players in the portal alone. Players tend to enter because of either a lack of playing time or a coaching change at their school.
The former Cass Tech High School football coach had a really strong opinion on how the portal negatively impacts high school recruiting.
“Colleges are not going to wait around for recruits anymore because they can go straight to the transfer portal and recruit from there also,” says Wilcher.
Many believe entering the portal shall make you miss either half or your full next collegiate season. Although the portal has a lot of bad things in it, there are some good ones, as they do have a time period you can enter. Players have 30 days of the portal being open in the winter and 15 days in the spring. It has become a college free agency.
Former Ole Miss head coach Matt Luke spoke on the portal multiple times during his tenure there.
“I liked the idea of having, when they left, to sit out a year, but when they graduate they get that year back. That way they don’t lose a year of eligibility, they get it back when they graduate. So I thought that was a unique way to look at it. If they graduate, then they could leave without penalty. But then if they didn’t, as soon as they graduated, they got that year back, so there’s no loss of a year. So I thought that was maybe something we could look at,” says Luke.
Some coaches love the portal more than others because of NIL money, which is another reason why some coaches hate the portal, and they call it free agency. Some coaches took advantage of NIL deals in the portal and high school recruiting by just paying players to come to their program. The NIL and portal rules both being changed within 4 years was not the greatest idea by the NCAA.
Some people question the difference between the portal and free agency.
“Unlike free agency, the college athletes entering the NCAA Transfer Portal can do so at any time. These college athletes are not in a contract with a university and can decide to leave at any time throughout the season or offseason. Professional athletes often are bound by the terms of a contract and can only enter free agency when the terms of those contracts are no longer applicable,” says writer Scotty Jenkins.
