Todd’s Take: Busy Transfer Portal At Indiana, But Human Element Gets Lost In Process

As we get caught up in the horse trading of the transfer portal, especially at Indiana, take a moment to take into account the human element the business of the portal shoves aside.

Indiana Hoosiers forward Malik Reneau (5) consoles forward Mackenzie Mgbako (21) after a missed shot at the end of the second half against the UCLA Bruins at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. / Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Have you ever seen the football movie “North Dallas Forty”? Released in 1979, it was a thinly veiled story of the Dallas Cowboys of the late 1960s based on the book written by former Cowboy Pete Jent.

Good movie, very much of its time, and it has a ton of funny lines in it, especially scenes from the locker room and on the field.

However, the one line from that movie that resonates is a serious one. It’s spoken by the character played by real life football player John Matuszek.

“Every time I call it a game, you call it a business, and every time I call it a business, you call it a game.”

That line continues to resonate today – and not just in football. The on-going transfer portal horse swapping in college basketball for both genders brought that line to my head this week.

You’d have to paraphrase it to get to my meaning. In college sports: Every time an athlete wants to be treated like an adult, you call them a kid, and every time they want to be a kid, you call them an adult.

Before I go on, I want to make it clear that I fully support the existence of the transfer portal. Player movement that matches the big money moves administrators and coaches have always made – to say nothing of regular students – should never have been restricted in the first place.

The haphazard, chaotic way this new freedom has been applied isn’t the athletes’ fault. That culpability lies with the NCAA and its member schools who held on way too long and fought legal battles in vain to try to protect a system that anyone with a cursory knowledge of jurisprudence knew was illegal. In that sense, I’ll defend the free transfer of players to the hilt.

Having said all of that, on a human level, the transfer portal is a really depressing exercise.

A dozen Indiana men’s and women’s basketball players went into the transfer portal this week. They all have their own reasons, and many will land on their feet. Some might not.

Some players likely went into the portal of their own volition. Some others? Let’s just say the portal isn’t just a convenient tool to enable players to move around. It can be a tool for those to be moved out, too. That’s when the “kid” is confronted with the very adult reality of being cast aside by the same coaches who loved them when they signed them.

When signed, whether out of high school or out of the portal, athletes are sold on family. On that bond with coaches and teammates. On commitment. This is the paternalistic/maternalistic thing coaches preach about when they talk about their “kids.”

The transfer portal makes a mockery of every last bit of it. Family? I know it exists in some programs – Indiana football has it right now – but a lot of teams have become one-year propositions. That’s not family. That’s going to summer camp where you make friends, do some fun things, and move on.

The bond with coaches and teammates? It’s real, but it’s fleeting. The coach-player relationship in college used to be akin to marriage. You lived with each other for four or five years, having to put up with each other’s foibles. Sometimes programs pushed players out, sometimes players left, but most coaches and most players stuck with one another and tried to make it work.

If it was a marriage before, it’s a fling now. I’ve never cheated on my wife, but there’s clearly something to be said for flings given how many people have them. But it’s usually empty in the end. A brief dalliance that is passionate when it begins, but very often descends into an unsatisfying relationship that doesn’t have much of a future.

Commitment? These “kids” are agreeing to very adult agreements regarding NIL payments and the like. It’s cynical, but fair, to wonder whether the commitment is to the name on the jersey or the name on the check. But that doesn’t let the schools and coaches off the hook who preach commitment to practice and extra time in the gym who then demonstrate their commitment when they mercilessly push players out at the end of a season.

Indiana's Lexus Bargesser (1), Henna Sandvik (21), Julianna LaMendola (20), and Faith Wiseman (31) celebrate a three pointer during the Indiana versus Nebraska women's basketball game at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025. Wiseman is the only player of this group that isn't in the transfer portal. / Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

College athletics has become a transactional exercise. It always was, but now it’s far more pronounced. We don’t get time to love these players as we once did. They rarely get time to form more than a one-year bond with a school, their teammates or a coach.

 I get it – everyone is making money off it. Fans are less inclined to look at players as human beings because they get NIL money. While great, money can’t buy you love. Not from fans who are increasingly disconnected from the athletes on the teams they follow. Not from institutions who have created a money-gulping entity so ravenous that student-athletes have become student-commodities to them.

The transfer portal has made it far more impersonal. Sure, there’s a segment of fans who love the horse-trading part of it, and we in the media certainly aren’t shy in writing about the massive migration that occurs annually.

Twelve players left Indiana’s basketball teams this week. Twelve human beings, we should note, who gave their all to Indiana in ways we’ll never know. All gone. Consigned to the dustbin of history. Footnotes in next year’s media guide.

While there will be renewed excitement for the players who replace them, I don’t want to forget the contributions from those who are leaving. Some humanity should be injected into the process, if just within the scope of this column.

Kanaan Carlyle, Gabe Cupps, Mackenzie Mgbako, Jakai Newton, Malik Reneau, Myles Rice and Bryson Tucker on the men’s side probably wouldn’t know who I am. Same for Lexus Bargesser, Sharnecce Currie-Jelks, Julianna LaMendola, Lilly Meister and Henna Sandvik. In my interactions with them, whether somewhat frequent or having barely had a conversation at all, they demonstrated class and that’s all one can ask.

All of them gave something to Indiana while they were here in Bloomington. And all of them likely had at least one fan who’s going to miss them. They won’t get the chance to say goodbye. They deserve a bit better than an Instagram farewell note or a Tipton edit post on X.

So from my corner of the web, to those departed Indiana players, I say thanks. In my case, for being classy and enduring my questions, but in the general sense for giving or trying to give Indiana what it wanted when it sought you out in the first place.

Those are quaint notions in this transactional world we’ve created, but they still mean something. Or they should.

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