Waiting begins as Lincoln Riley & Mike Gundy deal with NCAA transfer portal
Berry TramelOklahoman
Mike Woods caught a touchdown pass in the Arkansas spring game a week ago. Three days later, Woods entered the transfer portal, and the Razorbacks never saw it coming.
Here’s how we know. The day after the spring game, Arkansas posted a tweet about Woods.
“This is Mike,” the tweet read. “We’d like to extend our condolences to defenses that have to cover Mike.”
By Friday, condolences were in order for the Razorbacks, who lost to OU one of their precious few weapons. The Sooners are a program that produces weapons by the litter.
Welcome to the new world order of college football free agency. The NCAA transfer portal makes it easier than ever for transferring athletes to be re-recruited, and the new immediate-eligibility rule incentivizes transfers.
And as Arkansas discovered, football coaches can be blindsided.
Both OU and OSU finished spring practice Saturday, and now begins two months of stress. Players can enter the portal as late as July 1 and be eligible for the 2021 season.
Coaches must be prepared for possible defections.
“We get that's part of our life now,” Lincoln Riley said. “It's just kind of part of our everyday world.”
Riley’s staff plans exit meetings with players in the next week or so. Maybe that’s a chance for coaches to sniff out discontentedness. Maybe exit meetings are when Arkansas coaches discovered Woods was restless. I don’t know, maybe exit meetings are when some coaches suggest the transfer portal wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
“We're not shying away from it,” Riley said of the portal’s new dominant role in college football. “We're not nervous about it. That's just kind of the way it goes right now.
“We'll have a meeting with each and every player, and if there's anything like that we have to address, then we certainly will.”
Heck, losing a valuable player in April is a bitter pill. But how about losing a player (or more) in late June? That’s what worries Mike Gundy.
At least Arkansas has some time to rally from the loss of Woods.
“Number management, how do we handle the 25/85” scholarship limits, Gundy asked?
Gundy offered a scenario in which a team was down in numbers. Maybe at 74 scholarship players, 11 fewer than the maximum, perhaps because of NCAA probation or multiple coaching changes.
"That’s a big disadvantage,” Gundy said. “Then after spring ball, all the way up to July 1, you can roll out of there. You could go through June, roll out of there and go play for Kansas State, if you want to, and be eligible to compete.
“Now I’m at 68 out of 85 scholarships, and it’s July, and I've got to play in September. That’s a problem. I don’t know how you fix it fast.”
The NCAA proposal initially suggested May 1 as the deadline for autumn- and winter-sport athletes declaring for immediate eligibility upon transfer. It seems ill-fitting that the same deadline applies to both football and baseball players, when their sports start five months apart.
But that’s the reality.
“Coaches trying to control it, you can forget that,” Gundy said. “Everybody is going to be able to move and go as they want. So we need to establish that as over, and then how do we handle it the best way going forward without it negatively impacting college football?”
Coaches will need to be more cognizant of their players’ attitudes. Monitoring the mood. Making sure players feel valued and on a good track.
But Woods apparently had no problem with his Arkansas coaches or even the program in general. Even upon leaving, Woods tweeted out praise for head coach Sam Pittman and new receivers coach Kenny Guiton, saying he would be a Razorback fan for life.
Woods’ move seems to be a clear business decision. Arkansas’ quarterback situation is not great, and its offensive productivity hasn’t been much in years. Meanwhile, OU has a Heisman Trophy contender in Spencer Rattler and offensive pedigree that is the envy of the nation.
So players leave for all kinds of reasons. And the sooner a coach knows a player is on the move, the better. Hence the importance of the exit meetings.
“Talk about what we saw from the spring and prospects going forward and answer questions that they have,” Riley said. “We're always very proactive with that. We want there always to be ongoing discussions. You understand this is a time where we’ll probably have a few guys that we're gonna have that kind of discussion with.”
And the waiting begins. Even after the spring game, the waiting could be two months.
