{"id":4266,"date":"2021-06-23T11:18:47","date_gmt":"2021-06-23T16:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gridironstuds.com\/blog\/?p=4266"},"modified":"2021-06-23T11:18:50","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T16:18:50","slug":"is-the-portal-creating-mayhem-in-college-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/is-the-portal-creating-mayhem-in-college-football\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Portal Creating Mayhem in College Football?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Chad Wilson – Editor GridironStuds Blog<\/strong>
\nTwitter: @GridironStuds<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

College football is going through what I would call a reformation period.\u00a0 I don’t think I can recall a time in my life in which so many changes have been made to the game in such a short space of time.\u00a0 From rules to protect players (targeting) to the formation of a playoff system and the prospects of the athletes getting paid,\u00a0 if you went into a coma in 2010 and woke up today,\u00a0 you’d barely recognize the sport.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 few of these changes have garnered more attention over the last couple of years than the transfer portal.<\/p>\n

Much of the early news about the portal was about what savvy college football coaches dipped into the portal to bling out their roster the best.\u00a0 University of Miami coach Manny Diaz and Florida coach Dan Mullen were some notable coaches to hit the jackpot.\u00a0 No doubt there have been some great transfer portal stories that the makers of the rule can hang their hat on.\u00a0 Jalen Hurts’ move from Alabama to Oklahoma and into the Heisman Trophy race would be one of the tops on the list.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 as is the case with many rule changes,\u00a0 there are winners and losers.\u00a0 Of late,\u00a0 it seems the losers are the bigger room in the transfer portal.<\/p>\n

For every Jalen Hurts,\u00a0 there seems to be 100 other bad decisions being made.\u00a0 In reality,\u00a0 Hurts was a graduate transfer from Alabama,\u00a0 meaning he had completed his degree and made the move for his final season to the Sooners.\u00a0 Even without the transfer portal,\u00a0 Hurts would have been able to make the move that he made and likely prosper in the same way.\u00a0 Often times,\u00a0 transfer moves made later in a player’s career have a higher degree of success.\u00a0 Typically,\u00a0 the player making them has more maturity,\u00a0 has spent more time in their initial program and as such has totally exhausted all avenues of reconciliation with that program before choosing to transfer.\u00a0 Such is not the case now with an ever growing frequency.<\/p>\n

The mindset for most recruits coming out of high school these days is to start and or play as soon as possible in college.\u00a0 Recruits are on a three year plan as opposed to a four or five year plan.\u00a0 Redshirting has been reduced to getting rejected by a potential prom date.\u00a0 Not starting is a drink thrown in your face and playing sparingly as a freshman is like stepping on your Nikes in the club.\u00a0 In the eyes of the 18 or 19 year old,\u00a0 these are signs of disrespect by the offending program.\u00a0 I get it,\u00a0 college football players are looking at college basketball players becoming multi-millionaires at 19 and thinking,\u00a0 why shouldn’t I hit my payday at 20 or 21?\u00a0 \u00a0The biggest problem with a lot of these changes is that what is publicized are the winners like Jalen Hurts but what is more prevalent are the losers.<\/p>\n

The transfer portal has become a hotbed for athletes who quickly determine their chances at the school of their initial choice and look to jump back in the pool at the first sign of depth chart resistance.\u00a0 We are living in a microwave society and as such when the results don’t come quick,\u00a0 then something must be wrong with the institution in place.\u00a0 It’s hard to get an actual number of athletes that are in the transfer portal but I am here to tell you that it’s over 1,500.<\/p>\n

Not only has that huge number caused problems at the NCAA institutions,\u00a0 it has also caused problems in the World of high school recruiting.\u00a0 The NCAA decided that they would not make any adjustments to the rule that states a program can only sign a max of 25 recruits per cycle.\u00a0 As a result,\u00a0 there have been less scholarships available to high school football players.\u00a0 When one program gets the benefit of two, three, four or even more athletes from the portal,\u00a0 it means there are less spots available for a high school recruit.\u00a0 Likewise,\u00a0 a program that has lost a similar amount of players to the portal can not now make that up by signing additional prospects from the high school level.\u00a0 This leaves a void in the recruiting process.<\/p>\n

In addition to that,\u00a0 more and more programs are seeking answers to their depth chart questions in the portal.\u00a0 Teams have found it more advantageous to grab a young player from the portal who has had a taste of college football as opposed to taking a chance on a high school football player.\u00a0 Texas State recently comprised their entire signing class with transfers. With that still,\u00a0 many players remain stuck in the transfer portal looking for a new home.<\/p>\n

Ultimately,\u00a0 the transfer portal is serving the fickle mindset of youngsters.\u00a0 They want instant results and success.\u00a0 When it does not happen they move quickly to seek a better,\u00a0 easier situation. What they end up finding is a worse situation typically at a lower level or as a walk on.\u00a0 What has been happening also is transferring becomes contagious.\u00a0 Once you make that first transfer,\u00a0 leaving the next school becomes easy and transferring twice is starting to rise.<\/p>\n

Some prospects find themselves sliding down the college football pole either by ending up at a less desirable destination or unable to find another destination at all.\u00a0 This is leading to guys quitting football and school all together.\u00a0 The fact still remains that only 1% are going to make it to the professional level.\u00a0 When a young athlete is given the opportunity to obtain a higher education worth $250k and even more when you consider future earnings,\u00a0 it’s a shame when that goes to waste.<\/p>\n

Now more than ever,\u00a0 it is important that prospects make the right choice the first time (coming out of high school) and remember the reasons they made that choice when things don’t go exactly as planned.\u00a0 Sure,\u00a0 the prospects are being recruited by people and it gets difficult not to get attached to that.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 you have to muster the discipline to recognize that you need to be sold on the institution over everything.\u00a0 The people come and go but the universities stay where they are.\u00a0 Take stock of the history of the school as it relates to academics and athletics,\u00a0 specifically football.\u00a0 Ask yourself how sure you are that you can\u00a0 still get what you want from the program if everyone there now suddenly left tomorrow.\u00a0 Keep in mind the institution that you bought into when some of your personal relationships with the people take a turn to the left. Do all that you can to repair or manage the situation so that you can get what you need from the program.\u00a0 After carefully exhausting all avenues and taking a solid amount of time doing so,\u00a0 the answer may still be to leave.\u00a0 If that’s the case then you can be the next one to cram on the transfer portal bus traveling to parts unknown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Chad Wilson – Editor GridironStuds Blog Twitter: @GridironStuds College football is going through what I would call<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":4269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,499],"tags":[112,1103],"class_list":["post-4266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-recruitingnews","tag-college-football-recruiting","tag-transfer-portal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}