Secrets of the college football transfer portal: ‘There’s definitely tampering going on’ (The Athletic)

[TheDrifter75]

I know for a fact some coaches reached out to one of our senior players during our 2020 not playing season and asked him to leave UConn and come to their school. Said player wasn’t in the portal and they were trying to poach him right out from under the coaches noses. It happens more than you think

Right. That was against the rules in place though, correct? As long as a player is allowed to transfer there will be people using wrong channels to try to entice them.

I just hit a tree with my head doing 30+ on a snowmobile, so I'm sure I'm missing something. I just think people tampered before and they'll tamper now. Portal, no portal, nil, no nil people will try to lure, offer money and do back handed deals no matter what.

 

[giddyup]

After the P5 snake finishes eating the weak it has no place to turn but start eating it’s own tail. CFB is on a path towards self destruction fueled unchecked greed and corruption.

 

[SubbaBub]

Why should their be rules on cherry picking? I see only a few provisions the NCAA could possible police; i) no student athletes shall be recognized or paid directly as if they are an employee and ii) general eligibility (including transfer rules)/academic enrollment rules, everything else is free market mania.

Pro sports can have tampering rules because its paid labor and for profit enterprise all operating under a collective contract.

The only reasonable curb to all this is to strictly limit student athletes to 1 free immediate eligibility transfer over their careers.

There is only one reason. If one can (still) believe that the education of the (student) athlete is priority one and that athletics is just an enhancement, then you can credibly argue that students hopping around to numerous schools is detrimental to that goal. The remedy to a free agent marketplace is to add a cost to transferring. Such a cost would be a disincentive to transferring for small bumps in NIL pay or minor disputes over playing time, coaching changes, or personal matters.

You can create that friction by counting transfer player scholarships as 1.5 that of a regular scholarship against the max or the number of years of eligibility remaining for the player, i.e., your transfer has 3 years left, that costs you three scholarships. They could be applied one per year or all at once. The idea of taking potential scholarships away from other recruits would not be popular. Another would be to make transfers sit a year and not granting a redshirt for it. You transfer, you only get to play 3 years in 5. Transfer after your freshman year, you only get two more. I'd still give graduates a free pass. I think that is a good incentive for everyone. Not 5th year players, ones that actually graduate.

Then we get to the real problem, tampering. It's a problem in the NFL and a real problem in the NBA. There is no reason for a school or its boosters to contact a player in another program. There should be severe penalties for doing so. There is no way to stop players who happen to know each other from passing messages, but undisclosed contacts should be punished. The NCAA has an interest in not having a free for all. The P5 power brokers have a different idea.

 

[Exit 4]

Pro athletes are paid serious cash to accept tampering rules. It’s part of their collective bargaining. I don’t think students should be subject to the same anti competitive practices when they aren’t paid labor. The kids should be allowed to explore their market value, just like the vast majority of us have in our current employment.

 

[TheDrifter75]

Pro athletes are paid serious cash to accept tampering rules. It’s part of their collective bargaining. I don’t think students should be subject to the same anti competitive practices when they aren’t paid labor. The kids should be allowed to explore their market value, just like the vast majority of us have in our current employment.

Do you think it should be on the student to reach out to explore their market value or is it ok for an outside source to reach out to them to open their eyes to their market value?

 

[Exit 4]

Do you think it should be on the student to reach out to explore their market value or is it ok for an outside source to reach out to them to open their eyes to their market value?

I don’t think the distinction matters- both are happening

 

[TheDrifter75]

Yes, both are happening. You had made the statement that kids should be allowed to explore their market value. My question was, in your opinion, do you think that should only be on the student or should sources outside their current schools interest make first contact to explore their market value?

 

[Kolumbo]

The thing about the above scenario is that the 200k is not to lure the athlete to the P5, it would have happened most likely without the money. The 200k is just to keep another P5 out of the picture. Good kids were already favoring the big time P5 schools as it is and there are only a certain amount of spots, so its not like this is a major talent drain on the G5, they weren't exactly getting the same talent already.

It does create an opportunity for lower tiered schools to poach from bigger programs though, which was a much harder sell before. Alabama and Georgia and all the other big time schools were getting the good players before, its not like they can suck up more of them, there is no room, but now this makes a smaller school with deep pocket donors a player in the game, which may end up expanding the football talent spectrum across more teams and potentially making it more difficult for one or two top teams to stack all of the talent.

This is a great point. I wonder who makes out better. Lousy P5 programs who can afford to buy players from better programs (it always seemed to me the Kansases had to try very hard to be bad at football) or G5 programs who can offer playing time.
Whatever the situation, the timing is ripe for UCONN with Mora and his experience to take full advantage of transfers. Do it.

 

[Patman]

Attempts for central regulation on NIL is a dangerous political game for the NCAA....Washington is not going to like it....And moreover the NCAA cannot get its member Universities to agree on much.

agreed, every attempt would have been a loser, and end up back where we are right now.

 

[huskymedic]

 

[billybud]

The Transfer Portal is like a card game...maybe Canasta.

You discard a card to be able to pick another from the deck...and someone else may take your discard.

Both of you are attempting to build a winning hand.

Alabama has been discarding for years...some call it "processing"....talking to players about their odds of playing, encouraging or even arranging a transfer out, having a medical disqual which maintains a guy's scholarship while not counting it against cap.

The Portal just cleans this up some....