Is the Transfer Portal + NIL Hurting More Schools Than It is Helping?

The days of building a program are a part of the past. Now, it's about roster management and keeping student-athletes happy 24/7.

Not many days go by where you don't hear about a player entering the transfer portal. Schools are losing athletes left and right in just about every sport. The days of being able to build depth on a college roster are now a part of the past. As WVU head baseball coach Randy Mazey likes to call it, "roster management."

"These days, if you don't play those young talented freshmen enough, they just go right into the portal," Mazey said. "My take is, for Neal [Brown], Huggs, and [Mike] Carey, welcome to my world. We as baseball coaches have been managing rosters for 50 years with the draft and losing high school kids. Now, they're having to deal with what we've dealt with for a long time. Roster management is no stranger to the world of college baseball, but it's taken on a whole new level with the transfer portal. You no longer are trying to build a program. You just have to build a team one year at a time."

Ben Queen-USA TODAY Sports

The biggest issue with the transfer portal is that there are really no restrictions for when a player can enter the portal. Heck, your starting quarterback or starting point guard could plop his name into the portal a month before the season starts and now, the coaching staff doesn't have enough time to fill that player's spot.

For example, at the start of the 2021-22 portal cycle which began on August 1st, there were over 1,400 FBS football players in the portal. Just think about that. 1,400 athletes without a school with the season one month away from starting. This not only meant that several teams lacked depth but it also meant there was an outrageous amount of athletes that were not going to be able to play in 2021. 

Ben Queen-USA TODAY Sports

WVU men's basketball coach, Bob Huggins, gave out a couple of ideas that might help make the portal easier to handle. First, he mentioned having a window of when players can and can't enter the portal. "To be fair to their teammates, yeah, there should be a transfer window."

Implementing a transfer window/period will keep things from being as chaotic as it is at the present moment. Coaches will know that they have a time to recruit the portal, sign kids from the portal, and know that they won't lose players to the portal outside of this window.

Recruiting out of the portal is another beast itself. You don't get to see these guys play as much and in most instances, as seen with this year's basketball team, you don't get players who fit. Huggins' other idea was to have a camp where players in the portal could come and play in front of coaches but also have NBA guys there to help give them advice.

“I think it would be great. I think it would be great to have,” said Huggins. “I mean, you have them for high school kids. Why couldn’t you have them for transfers? I think it would deter kids from making bad decisions. If they’re playing for an NBA guy, and they say, ‘You need to take your [butt] back to school. You’re not ready for this.’ I think that would have more impact. I just think it makes more sense.

“Actually, they could shut the door and not the let the agents in, so the people talking to them are actual NBA people. Maybe General Managers, managers, coaches, assistant coaches, former players, whatever. They don’t have a dog in the fight. They don’t care whether the guy goes or stays. They don’t care.”

The other issue with the transfer portal is that some kids are going to use it as a leaping pad. If they didn't get the offers they wanted out of high school but perform well in their first year or two in college, they may have people getting in their ear telling them they could go to this school and make more money through NIL and play on an even bigger stage. NIL can be and will be a major recruiting pitch from this point forward and somehow, the schools that don't have the same opportunities will have to find a way to draw athletes in and keep them for their entire collegiate career.

When NIL became approved, WVU head football coach Neal Brown was uncertain of how it would be managed. At the time, he said he had more questions than answers and although he may be more educated on it now, his point on who is monitoring this stuff is still valid to this day.

"When you get the parameters, how do you monitor that? You know what I mean? Like, who is in charge of monitoring that? Is that going to be a part of the head coaches' responsibility? Because how am I going to monitor if they have an agent? I do think it can be beneficial to some extent. I just don't know how you manage it."

Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

Unfortunately, for any changes to be made to the transfer portal or NIL, the NCAA will have to step in and get involved and that's not something worth betting your money on. It took the NCAA years to even allow student-athletes to get paid and now that they've allowed it, I don't think they care all too much about the integrity of it or the transfer portal. Like it or not, this is just the new era that we are living in. Transfers are happening everywhere every single day.

"I know our fans think we're the only ones who lose them, and we've lost a little bit more than some, but that's just the world we live in now, " Brown said. "I used to take it really, really personal. There's some when they leave, I think, man, that's a lot of time and a lot of relationships. But I think that's just the era of college football we're in right now."

You can follow us for future coverage by liking us on Facebook & following us Twitter:

Facebook - @WVUonSI

Twitter - @SI_WVU and Schuyler Callihan at @Callihan_.