The Portal Keeps Turning, Tampering Continues, Who is in Control?
By Robert Allen
February 14, 2022
STILLWATER – It continues to churn, the NCAA Transfer Portal. I guess there are some West Coast schools that might still be able to enroll a student-athlete in classes, but from the ACC to the Big Ten and Big 12 semesters are over a month underway, and classes are closed. Still, there were at least three football players that went into the NCAA Transfer Portal on Valentine’s Day apparently ready to break up with their college home. One of those is Western Kentucky All-Conference USA offensive tackle Cole Spencer. Oklahoma State might be interested in the 6-4, 300-pound Spencer, who has 45 starts in Division I football and is a lot like Danny Godlevske was for the Cowboys last season, playing a sixth-year courtesy of the NCAA and COVID-19.
That is one aspect of college sports that coaches and administrators have to navigate and the other new addition from within the past year is NIL (Name-Image-and-Likeness) although in most places NIL has become synonymous with the words pay-for-play. You would think for the learned that are either involved in college athletics or part of the organization that is responsible for governing college athletics that they would know the difference. NIL is the process of someone making money, goods, or services based on who they are, what they look like, or what they have accomplished. Pay for play simply rewards money for playing for a certain team, organization, or institution.
NIL is someone paying Spencer Sanders for who he is and what he has accomplished and for him to endorse or appear on their behalf. That is good example of NIL.
Guess which school’s offensive linemen are supposed to get $50,000 each from the Pancake Society?
Pay-for-play is like a school offering money and a vehicle for an athlete to come and play for their football program. It could be like an offensive lineman on scholarship, in fact, all scholarship offensive linemen, regardless of name, image, or likeness receiving $50,000 dollars a year from a society (fund) generated by boosters contributions.
Now that we’ve tried to explain it in the open. The bottom line is coaches and even members of the media are struggling with the same process.
“I don’t think any of us have figured out the (transfer) portal,” West Virginia basketball head coach Bob Huggins said last week in an interview on Big 12 This Morning on Sirius-XM. “I don’t think the NCAA has figured it out because they haven’t told us the ins and outs of it. The university can’t be involved. How can the university not be involved if you are going to select a player or recruit a player or however you want to say it.”
West Virginia basketball head coach Bob Huggins calls it a crazy two years.
Huggins went on to say it is compounded because whether anybody wants to acknowledge it or not you have NIL too. The transfer portal and NIL have been working in concert. The Athletic’s David Ubben recently did a story on the truths of the transfer portal and he had multiple coaches quoted about the tampering going on. Most of it is coming down there where they say “it just means more.” Yes, the SEC. Imagine that, something maybe a little shady going on in SEC Country.
It’s been a crazy two years, probably crazier than any year that any of us (coaches) have experienced in a long time, maybe ever. No, I would say ever,” added Huggins.
“There is definitely some legitimacy to that,” ESPN senior college football and college sports writer Adam Rittenberg said in an interview with me on radio. “There are also some factors that aren’t necessarily controllable as far as the area of the country they are in, how much college football matters, certainly the proximity to talent, elite talent. A lot of it is concentrated in the south and the southeast and it is a region and control a league (SEC) is not going to relinquish much. They always seem to want more.”
Sometimes even if they have to take it. In The Athletic story, the perception created was the SEC might be behind the majority of tampering.
“You mentioned the transfer portal, technically the transfer portal is open for everyone, open for business,” Rittenberg said. “Obviously, the SEC has had great success with it. I don’t know unless there is some sort of edict and a commissioner of college football if the balance of power changes very much going forward.”
There is little doubt that the SEC has been extremely efficient, almost as if they had practiced or prepared in advance, with NIL or its evil cousin pay-for-play.
A veteran college basketball coach, a future Hall-of-Fame coach in Bob Huggins is struggling with understanding what you can and cannot do.
“Take the portal and add NIL to it and now all of a sudden you have no clue what is going on,” Huggins said in that Sirius-XM interview. “We have asked for in the NABC (National Association of Basketball Coaches), we have asked for clarification and really haven’t gotten any. We are all out there swinging in the wind. Nobody knows really what you are allowed to do. What you are not allowed to do. The institution can’t be involved, but allegedly people on the outside can be involved. Although, for the 20 whatever or so years that I’ve done this outside people were a no-no. All of a sudden, we throw a portal out there where anybody can put their name in. How can anybody cut a deal when somebody gets a million dollars (Alabama quarterback)? How was somebody on the outside not involved? I don’t care what you do, tell us what the parameters are.”
Before being forced out at TCU this fall, highly successful head coach Gary Patterson was concerned.
"We better be careful,” Patterson said. “We won’t have college football."
Oklahoma State officials have been hesitant to discuss NIL much. They thought they were prepared using outside consultants to help their student-athletes find NIL opportunities. The thought was that the school, itself could not be involved. Now, schools have both feet in the NIL process helping athletes get thousands of dollars. Oklahoma State has changed course and is going about the process differently.
A big part of the problem is the NCAA, which seems to have lost its’ teeth since punishing the Cowboy basketball team with a tournament ban for this season. The NCAA is really looking at how to stay out of court and not make anybody mad while protecting their March Madness pay day and keep people in their home office gainfully employed. They have a constitutional reform process going on with the major theme of handing back more control and enforcement to the conferences and less for them to do.
Another problem is the combination of the transfer portal, the COVID-19 extra year of eligibility for all athletes involved in the 2020 season, and the inconsistency the NCAA had in first not counting athletes taking advantage of that extra or what is now referred to commonly as the super senior season. Those athletes after the first year now count against the 85-scholarship limit. You have to factor in super seniors, mid-year transfers that are either junior college or high school signees, and transfer portal gains and losses.
Gundy shown recruiting quarterback Garret Rangel, is like Huggins. Just explain what is legal and wat isn’t.
"I don't think anybody knew the direction it was going when it was put in place. I think it's a dangerous thing," Oklahoma State football head coach Mike Gundy said of the transfer portal. "I think there are a few things that are positive, but the majority of it is dangerous unless the NCAA changes the opportunity for coaches to manage roster numbers based on the 85 scholarships that we have. They have failed to address and put in place ways for us to manage our roster based on the current portal situation."
Gundy knew with 10 signees, two junior college and eight high school, waiting to enroll and join his program for the spring semester there had to be some movement. Most of it was anticipated. One that wasn’t was three-year starting corner and safety Jarrick Bernard-Converse, who suddenly and surprisingly went into the portal. It looked like he was going to stay as some NIL opportunities were discussed with him. Then a day after telling several coaches and teammates he was staying, LSU announced his transfer on their football Twitter account.
“I always laugh when people, even people that I work with, or people that work for the SEC or schools in the SEC; it is almost that they are craving attention or confirmation that they are the best. I don’t understand why you need to do that,” Rittenberg told me. “You are kind of arguing against nobody at that point. You are almost shouting into the air. That is the nature of the SEC. I do wonder what The Alliance or the rest of college football can do to try and neutralize that as much as possible.”
I’m wondering too. The NFL is so successful because there is a system set up to create competitive balance. I don’t think that will work in college athletics, I think most of us would settle for a system out in the open, so you can at least see what it takes to compete. Right now, in the wild west of the portal and NIL (pay-for-play) combined it is hard to tell. Deals are hush-hush and not exactly out in the open. Find out what it takes and then you at least know if you can compete or if it is out of your budget.
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