ORLANDO, Fla. — The phone call came the other night from a high school football coach who I’ve known for years, and there was concern, alarm and even anger in his voice.
He is concerned that college coaches rarely even show up on his campus anymore because they are spending most of their time scouting the transfer portal.
He is alarmed that the nation’s big-time institutions of higher earning, er, learning will simply fill their rosters with college free agents rather than high school recruits.
And, yes, he is angry that high school football players within the state and across the country are having their futures stolen from them by the burgeoning, bloated transfer portal.
“The transfer portal is killing high school recruiting and robbing good kids of the opportunity to go to college,” says John Brantley, a state championship-winning coach at Ocala Trinity Catholic. “Something has to be done.”
Brantley — a former Florida Gators football player whose son also played at UF and who has watched dozens of his players earn college scholarships — is absolutely right about the devastating effect the transfer portal has had on high school recruits. However, the solution he so desperately desires won’t be easy to find in today’s impatient, impetuous world of college football.
The transfer portal was a good idea that has unintentionally gone bad for thousands of high school athletes in all sports. The concept of the portal was to give college athletes more control over their decisions and futures, but it has quickly and completely changed the way college coaches recruit.
Former UCF star quarterback Dillon Gabriel is one of the ever-expanding 842 FBS players (as of Friday) in the transfer portal, according to 247Sports.com. These players are rightfully taking advantage of the new NCAA legislation allowing athletes a one-time free transfer to another college without having to sit out a season. This has created unfettered free agency in college football that has had a profoundly negative impact on high school players.
In short, here’s how the portal is working and will work moving forward: Marquee Power 5 football programs pluck elite players from less prestigious schools while the less prestigious programs pursue disgruntled players from the marquee schools or from the FCS level (see Western Kentucky surging to the top of Conference USA behind the incredible play of Houston Baptist transfer quarterback Bailey Zappe).
In essence, existing college football (and basketball) players are simply moving from school to school, squeezing out incoming high school athletes. Basketball has actually been impacted even more than football, evidenced by coach Mike White’s resurgent 14th-ranked Florida Gators, whose top six players this season all came from the portal.
“This college free agency is killing college opportunities for high school athletes,” Brantley says. “Sure, the top 20 percent or 30 percent of high school players — the cream of the crop — are still going to sign with big-time schools. And the 30 or 40 percent below the cream of the crop will find a place to play somewhere. The question is what happens to the bottom 20 or 30 percent? They have no place to go. They are going to end up out on the streets, and the last place they need to be is out on the streets.”
Unfortunately, sports are the only route for thousands of ambitious, hard-working kids to annually gain access to college. It’s no secret that many athletes in the revenue-producing sports (football and basketball) come from disadvantaged backgrounds and don’t have the academic credentials or financial means to get into a college without a scholarship. So while the transfer portal might be a godsend to disgruntled college athletes who want a fresh start at a new college, it is a hellhole for high school athletes who never get a chance to even get into a college.
Although FBS teams can have 85 players on scholarship each season, they can sign only 25 new players per year, which includes players from the portal. Complicating matters is the extra year of eligibility the NCAA granted to each athlete because of COVID-19.
Think about it: Why would marquee FBS programs that need a quarterback for next season sign one out of high school when they can just nab Gabriel, Oklahoma’s Spencer Rattler or another of the couple dozen other QBs from the portal?
In today’s what-have-you-done-for-me-lately environment, college football coaches realize that they risk losing their $8 million-a-year jobs if they don’t win immediately. Likewise, if they do win immediately, they know they will be compensated accordingly.
Exhibit A: Michigan State coach Mel Tucker rebuilt his roster through the portal last offseason by adding 19 transfers. The Spartans finished 10-2 and were in the running for the Big Ten championship and the CFB Playoff for much of the season. Consequently, Tucker just signed a 10-year, $95 million contract extension.
Thank you, transfer portal!!!
As a result, even coaches like Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, who has shied away from taking transfers in the past, are jumping headfirst into the portal. Swinney’s point is that if you lose a handful of established players to the portal, then you’re probably going to replace them with another handful of established players from the portal.
“There isn’t a school in the country who won’t recruit the portal,” Swinney says. “Everybody in D-1 football will have to deal with the portal in some form because you’re going to have gaps in your roster somewhere. That is the world we have created. I don’t like it, but that’s the world we are in now.”
Sadly, it is a world where too many high school athletes are having their dreams destroyed by the transfer portal.
Something — anything! — must be done.
