The landscape of college athletics is completely different from what it was 10 years ago — and personally, I’m not a fan.
When the games are played, it’s awesome. There is so much parity in college football, basketball, and baseball. However, when the games aren’t being played, covering college athletics is like covering a soap opera.
That’s putting it generously.
The transfer portal and NIL have made college athletics the Wild Wild West… times 10. Both of them make covering college athletics harder
than trigonometry. Recently, though, I was wondering what the landscape would look like if only one of the two existed.
What if only the transfer portal, as we know it today, existed? A world where an athlete could transfer without having to sit out a season, but not openly in search of the highest bidder. What if that only existed?
Sure, there would probably be thousands of athletes in the transfer portal. It would make roster construction difficult, but there wouldn’t be crazy stories about athletes being offered multi-million-dollar contracts or getting texts about their buyouts. (Yes, the latter of those is happening. It’s ridiculous).
Now, I would argue that the transfer portal can be good for athletes. They only have so many years to play college sports. They want to ensure they will get significant playing time, especially if they have aspirations to play professionally.
If that can’t happen at one school, having the opportunity to change scenery can be a good thing for them.
The transfer portal, for all its wildness, should be a net positive for athletes. It can be a good thing for coaching staffs, too. If they have a need, they can pursue it through the transfer portal.
Where the portal isn’t good is when money gets involved. The fact that athletes are transferring just to get more money is still hard to wrap one’s head around.
So what if NIL only existed? That part, I can get behind.
I’m not sure if we truly grasp how much pressure these student-athletes are under. Between school, long hours in their sports, personal lives, family lives, and financial lives, it can be a lot for any 18-to-22-year-old to manage.
There have been a lot of big-time college athletes throughout the 21st Century: Reggie Bush, Tim Tebow, Tyler Hansbrough, Blake Griffin, Johnny Manziel, Baker Mayfield, Ben Simmons, Zion Williamson, Joe Burrow, etc.
Can you imagine how much money they would have made in college? They should have had the opportunity.
College athletes should be treated like college students. They can earn money while working during their college careers. Why can’t athletes make money off playing sports that are big revenue generators?
NIL has lifted many ridiculous restrictions that college athletes used to face unnecessarily. If the transfer portal didn’t exist, and only NIL did, that would actually be fine. I believe that would encourage athletes to stay at their current school and seek out ways to make money off what they do.
The NCAA’s failures to govern college athletics caught up with it during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their response was to flip their policies regarding the transfer portal and NIL completely and radically. Now, they sleep in the bed they made, and it’s not well-made.
Both the transfer portal and NIL can coexist, but there needs to be better regulation. Do you trust the NCAA, though, to come up with those “better” regulations? I certainly don’t.
That’s why I was wondering this week: if only one of the transfer portal and NIL existed, how much better would the current landscape of college athletics look?
If the transfer portal only existed, athletes wouldn’t be, potentially, solely motivated by money. If NIL only existed, there would at least be more control over athlete transfers.
Either way, college athletics aren’t what they used to be. In some ways, that’s a good thing. Unfortunately, for other ways, it’s not.
