One of the big topics around college football these days is the outsized importance of the transfer portal. Players are flying in and out of it, hunting the best situation for themselves while doing calculations which now include the inducement of earning money with their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL).
The transfer game really picked up in the late 2010s when multiple programs put together some historic offenses and great runs by including transfer quarterbacks.
The Oklahoma Sooners started a transfer quarterback for five consecutive seasons from 2015-19 and in that time won five Big 12 Championships with two of those quarterbacks winning Heisman trophies.
The 2019 Sooners went down hard in the playoffs when their third transfer quarterback Jalen Hurts was badly outplayed by LSU, who had their own transfer quarterback in Joey Burrow. In fact, the 2019 Tigers had the greatest offensive season in the history of college football and Burrow won the Heisman after throwing for 5,671 yards, 60 touchdowns, and just six interceptions.
For the 2021 season the Sooners used the transfer portal to add a wide receiver (Mike Woods, Arkansas), running back (Eric Gray, Tennessee), safety (Key Lawrence, Tennessee), offensive tackle (Wanya Morris, Tennessee), and center (Robert Congel, Arizona). The role of transfers in shaping teams has quickly become massive.
During the previous years, college football had established the transfer portal as a new way of managing transfers between programs. A player interested in transferring now needed only to go to the compliance office at his school and submit his name to the portal, where other coaches could then see it and contact him about potentially enrolling in their own program.
Recently college football has seen two major changes which have taken the transfer portal up a notch. The first was a change in rules to allow a “one-time transfer” for any player. In the past, a transfer would cost a player a year of eligibility unless he was leaving as a grad transfer in which case he’d be immediately eligible. Now players could transfer before finishing a degree with no cost in eligibility.
The next was in allowing players to profit from NIL. Players can now openly take money in exchange for using their celebrity brand to promote products. Naturally, boosters at major programs immediately worked to establish ways to funnel money to players through ostensibly NIL programs.
For the 2022 season, Lane Kiffin’s Ole Miss Rebels took in 11 transfers who could play major roles for their team, including a high profile quarterback. He was sanguine about it all, noting to the media, “we have free agency now in college football.”
Is this ruining the game? Can a war game emphasizing collective sacrifice from large teams function with such a mercenary approach from the participants?
How will fans accept a game in which their players can “betray” them for their enemies if there’s better money on the other side?
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