Todd’s Take: Learn To Stop Worrying And Love The Transfer Portal

Where would Indiana athletics be without the unloved transfer portal? Many fans may not like it, but it’s had a transformative effect on the Hoosiers.

Indiana Hoosiers quarterback Kurtis Rourke (9) passes the ball in the second half against the Michigan Wolverines at Memorial Stadium. / Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – This Indiana football season is still a barely believable phenomenon.

The Hoosiers are 10-0 for the first time ever. Indiana is the talk of the college football world. Indiana will play its biggest game of the season, and possibly ever, when the fifth-ranked Hoosiers head to Ohio Stadium on Nov. 23 to take on No. 2 Ohio State.

The stakes? Oh, just a berth in the Big Ten championship game, a possible conference championship, and a chance for the Hoosiers to be the No. 1 team and seed in the College Football Playoff if Indiana defeated No. 1 Oregon in the Big Ten title game.

It’s hard to wrap your head around how quickly success has come and how complete it has been. The plaudits will go to coach Curt Cignetti and deservedly so. He has molded a losing program into a winner in whiplash fashion.

Great though Cignetti’s stewardship of the football program has been, he needed a tool to do it.

Indiana fans should get down on bended knee and give thanks to the transfer portal. Yes, the much-maligned portal. Cignetti’s efforts to turn the Hoosiers around would not have been possible without it.

Appreciation of the portal won’t be shared by everyone, but it should be. For those who grouse about the transfer portal – how dare those players move around! – learn to love it. At the very least, give it a grudging nod of approval.

How important has it been for Indiana football? A quick check of the stats is all you need to know to understand how impactful the portal has been.

Leading passer? Kurtis Rourke. Portal addition from Ohio.

Leading rusher? Justice Ellison. Portal addition from Wake Forest. Second and third-leading rushers? Ty Son Lawton and Kaelon Black, both portal additions from James Madison.

Indiana's Justice Ellison (6) runs during the Indiana versus Washington football game at Memorial Stadium on Oct. 26, 2024. / Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Indiana’s four leading receivers are all portal additions: Elijah Sarratt (JMU), Myles Price (Texas Tech), Ke’Shawn Williams (Wake Forest) and Miles Cross (Ohio). The leading tight end? Zach Horton, a portal addition from JMU.

Leading tackler? Aiden Fisher from JMU. Sacks? Mikail Kamara from JMU.

Congratulations to Amare Ferrell! The Hoosiers’ interception leader is the only leader of a major statistical category who is not a transfer.

You get the point. The infusion of talent from the portal is what made Indiana’s rapid transformation possible.

It isn’t just football. The three primary revenue sports at Indiana – football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball – are all influenced by the portal in a considerable way.

The face of the women’s basketball program – Sydney Parrish – came to Indiana via the portal from Oregon. So have current and recently departed stars Sara Scalia, Shay Ciezki and Karoline Striplin.

Indiana Hoosiers center Oumar Ballo (11) dunks the ball during the second half against the SIU Edwardsville Cougars at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. / Robert Goddin-Imagn Images

The portal is so influential on men’s basketball that it’s become the primary means of building the roster. Three of Indiana’s current starters – Myles Rice, Kanaan Carlyle and Oumar Ballo – are portal additions. So was Kel’El Ware last season – a first-round NBA draft pick.

Indiana’s basketball dependence on the portal irritates some fans who prefer to build via freshman additions, but no one objects when Indiana dips into its war chest to apply the other seismic change that’s come to college athletics – name, image and likeness – to get these portal additions through the door.

It’s created what I call the Woodson Effect. Coach Mike Woodson’s approval ratings jumped sky-high in April and May when fans got excited about their new shiny toys.

Yet there’s still a sizable number of fans who complain about the portal. That the portal needs to be “reigned in.” That kids aren’t the same and lack the same loyalties, etc. That the notion of a student-athlete is ruined. It’s all chaos!

I understand. Change is feared. Several generations of fans grew up and grew old without any major changes in how college athletics operated. Some fans don’t want college players to become quasi-professional. It undermines the reason why they’re college fans in the first place.

The dizzying portal season – where the total players who express their desire to move on reaches four-figure size in basketball – is a buzz kill for many. Where’s the loyalty? Where is the commitment? Where is the gumption to wait your turn to play?

Again, I understand it, but I also have a jaundiced view of how it once was, too. Give the players of previous eras the chance to move around and they would have just as today’s athletes do. Their “loyalty” was based on the harsh reality of having no real choice. Not without having to sit out a year, a rule, which in hindsight, seems laughably draconian.

Also, coaches and institutions lorded over their student-athletes with a paternalistic sense of ownership. They decided where you could transfer. They decided whether you earned the right to retain your scholarship. It was a bad system for the players that needed reform a long time ago, but because it stuck around for so long, people got used to it and thought of it as the norm.

If it helps, think of the portal as just an annual market correction. Good players get better opportunities. Players who can’t break through at the highest level can find their level and playing time at a more appropriate level.

To wit, former Hoosier basketball player Kaleb Banks is averaging 19.3 points and 10.3 rebounds for Tulane in three games against (bad) competition. Banks never proved he could produce at that level here, but it’s good for him he gets the opportunity to demonstrate his talents against an appropriate level of competition.

Whether you agree with the above paragraphs, would you rather have the alternative? Life without the portal? Given the chance to turn back the hands of time, I would think most Indiana fans would take a pass on that ride in the time machine.

I’m not sure any of Indiana’s major sports would be better without it – football being the most obvious sport that took galactic strides with the existence of the portal.

So when you’re giving thanks to Cignetti for transforming football, spare a thought for the weapon he used to do it.

The transfer portal. You may not love it, but without it, these life-long memories you’ve experienced on the gridiron in 2024 would still be the stuff of daydreams instead of a glorious reality.

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