GLENDALE, Ariz. — On Monday, the revenue-generating portion of the college sports season will end with the men’s national championship game.
There are spring sports, certainly, but the engine that pays all of their bills is big-time football and the NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments. An evolving phenomenon became pronounced this year: the liberation of college athletes.
In previous generations, NCAA rules and regulations kept players in place with restrictive measures that forced them to sit out a season if they changed schools and two seasons if they transferred within the same conference. The courts have recognized this for what it’s always been: restraint of trade.
College athletes (like college students in general) can now transfer as often as they wish — as often as another program will take them — without restraints. This, plus the ability to cash in on name, image and likeness has allowed college athletes to enjoy an unprecedented level of freedom.
The transfer portal has created an unending cycle of losing players and replacing players. The strong get more while the weak ones fade. Programs have become birds of prey, with Power 5 programs feasting on mid-majors, and mid-majors plucking ripe players from historically Black colleges and universities.
Does it work? Look no farther than both the men’s and women’s Final Four. The South Carolina women’s team streaked to an undefeated season with a team rounded out by key transfers. On the men’s side, the top seven scorers for NC State, including its entire starting five, are transfers. Alabama’s surprising Final Four team had six transfers, including four starters.
UConn has three transfers on its roster, including top scorers Tristen Newton, who transferred from East Carolina, and Cam Spencer, who transferred from Rutgers. Spencer started on last year’s UConn national championship team. UConn associate head coach Kimani Young explained the psychology of transfers last year to CT Insider. “Good players want to play with good players,” he said, “and you’re in the transfer portal for a reason. Either because your role wasn’t what you wanted it to be, and that was probably the case with guys who were leaving our program.
“And then there are guys who have had good careers but want to win more, or win big, or want to play on a bigger stage. I think that was the case for a lot of guys we recruited. We stayed confident in what we did. Obviously, this is an attractive place. You add the fact that we had a good core returning, and that made it an even more special place for these guys to be.”
Using transfers is not new. What has turned the industry upside down is the ability to transfer multiple times without having to sit out. That’s the game changer.
This is free agency on steroids.
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The issues coaches have with the portal range from practical issues to philosophical concerns.
NC State coach Kevin Keatts said the fact that coaches must recruit the portal even during the Final Four is an inconvenience. “I wish that we didn’t have to, as we’re in this greatest event that we’re in, deal with the portal. I wish it was a little bit later,” he said last week. “But I’m also a coach that believes that if there are opportunities for guys to leave, and they want to, then let ’em leave.
“We’ve done pretty good in the portal, so I’m excited about it. All five of our starters are from the portal. I got to be a big fan of it.”
Keatts added that coaches can inherit malcontents who may be unhappy anywhere they go. “You have to be careful who you get from the portal,” he said. “You have to get guys who fit into what you believe in and have the same vision that you have as a coach.”
Those who remains must embrace change or be left behind. Embracing change may mean coddling players and offering substantial (legal) inducements. It’s the world in which they all live.
For old-school coaches such as Bo Ryan, the former Wisconsin coach, the current Wild West is incomprehensible. Ryan, a member of the Hall of Fame class of 2024, coached at Wisconsin from 2001 to 2015 and is part of a generation who viewed transfers suspiciously.
When we spoke April 6, Ryan recalled what he said in 2015 after his team lost to Duke in the national championship game.
“I said here’s what I’m really proud of about my team: We do not have one one-and-done, we do not have one transfer,” Ryan said. “I said you may want to take a real good look at our team because I don’t think you’re ever going to have a team play in the national championship game that has that kind of background.”
The transfer portal many have cost Ryan’s son his job at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Will Ryan was hired in June 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. Ryan’s fate was all but sealed two years later when only four players from his 2021-22 season returned for the 2022-23 season. He was fired on Jan. 31, 2023, after starting the season 2-19.
“I’m all for player empowerment,” Ryan said when we spoke April 6. “It’s tough. Especially for low-major coaches because when kids entering the portal wanting to try to play at the higher levels, the high majors can just pick and choose which kids they think fit their program best or that they think can play and compete at that level, so you’re always going to be up against it.”
Ryan said that he is seeing fellow mid-major coaches lose their top players every year.
“They just expected us to reload with other guys and post more, but at the lower- and mid-major levels, that’s not necessarily the case,” he said. “If you’re lucky enough to get some quality transfers to come in and fill those the void, you look pretty good. But if you strike out with portal kids, or your younger freshmen just aren’t ready because they’re playing against grown men, you’re going to struggle.”
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To Ryan’s point, last year, UConn forward Alex Karaban and Clingan were exceptional players as freshmen and helped the Huskies win a national title.
For UConn coach Dan Hurley, the problems with the portal’s lack of guardrails are more philosophical. Hurley believes the lack of restraints may allow players to run away from their limitations and not have to look in the mirror. They can simply transfer. Hurley, the younger brother of Duke legend Bobby Hurley, played at Seton Hall. He was always in the shadow of his brother, who won two national titles at Duke.
“I look at my own situation,” Hurley said recently. “Obviously I’ll reflect on that. What changed my life was having to stay at Seton Hall, work through my own shortcomings, had to fix myself.
“Also coming to the realization that I wasn’t an NBA player, that I need to develop a skill set and mindset that would maybe put me in a situation where maybe I wouldn’t peak until my 40s and 50s, and it wouldn’t be as a player, it might be as a coach or in business, another aspect in life.”
Hurley acknowledged that sometimes changing programs is good. To a point.
“There’s a lot of positive things about being able to get a change of scenery,” he said. “You just hope it doesn’t create an environment where young people just run from fixing themselves, which is usually the issue.”
The larger question about limitless transfers is whether the portal is aiding or hurting athletes’ access to real education. Does the ability to change schools without restraint send athletes on a fool’s errand with no degree at the end? Athletes may be staying in school longer to take advantage of NIL deals, but are they receiving meaningful degrees?
Craig Robinson, executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches and the former coach at Brown and Oregon State, said he fears a trend away from meaningful education.
“What was beginning to happen and what’s continued to happen is, there are student-athletes, particularly Black students coming out of football and basketball, getting degrees, but they weren’t college-educated,” he said when we spoke on Sunday. “Whether the current climate is better or worse in the long run for athletes and for college sports is something we may not know for years.”
One thing we do know is that things will never be as they once were. Some coaches have gotten out the game, but the changes have forced coaches who have stayed to embrace the new reality: Players are free at last.
