By Trey Kenas
If there’s three guarantees in life, it’s death, taxes, and the NCAA struggling to ensure that their policies don’t contain loopholes. The newest example of the NCAA’s mishaps resides in the NIL landscape, where collegiate athletes are allowed to transfer schools as many times as they please, without repercussions. The NCAA must institute (minimally) 2-year contracts between players and their respective programs, as well as a one-time transfer rule, to eliminate the recklessness that is the transfer portal and take college sports away from becoming a bidding war.
To gain some perspective on this matter, flashback to 2024, where in that year over 1,000 players in Division 1 alone were in the transfer portal. In the 2023/2024 college football season, the transfer portal saw over 11,000 players across all divisions put their names in. How are coaches able to handle this wild goat rodeo, all while focusing on their team in the present? The answer: They’re not.
When asked about the current landscape of NIL and men’s college hoops on “The Swing” podcast, Wisconsin Men’s Basketball Head Coach Greg Gard said, “You are more of a CEO than you are a coach.” Gard followed this up by adding,“In regards to recruiting, you spend a lot of time future casting how your roster needs. We used to do it in three to four year snapshots… Now you’re looking at one-year snapshots.”
While some coaches are attempting to manage the sails on the choppy waters, some coaches have opted to step away from the dance floor. Legendary coaches such as Alabama football’s Nick Saban, Virginia men’s basketball Tony Bennett, and Miami men’s basketball Jim Larranaga have left their respective games largely impart to the ever changing landscape.
“The game and college athletics is not in a healthy spot”, Tony Bennett said, in an interview this past fall with Fox Sports. “I think I was equipped to do the job here the old way… Now I came to the realization that I can’t do this,” Bennett said.
Saban and Larranaga both agreed that the game had changed, and they were not willing to stick it out. They believed the foundational pieces of what makes the college game so great have drifted away, and thus, the bidding war has begun.
These coaches are correct. The game has changed, and in many cases not for the better. As a coach who is currently coaching at the high school level, it’s a grind like no other. The countless hours put in day in and day out, all for the tiny window of opportunity to do something special at the end of the season that only one team gets to celebrate. Adding in that extra element of paying players with no boundaries, with an already taxing and stressful job, coaches are left with a mountain in front of them that’s too steep to climb. Many collegiate coaches have stayed in college and not pursued the professional side of things, doing so largely impart to not having to deal with players and their monetary desires. So simply put, if we’re going to start paying athletes at the collegiate level like professionals, we must implement rules to start treating them like professionals.
Enter in player contracts, where each player is required to sign a minimum two-year contract with their respective university. This contract can be for more than two-years, obviously with monetary compensation in play. However, within the contract they are allowed to leave the school during their contract to pursue further athletic endeavors on three occasions. One; that they are going to play professionally, and are going to be out of the college game for good. Two; one of the head or assistant coaches on staff left for another job. Three; there is a family matter that requires them to transfer back closer to home. This way, coaches aren’t dealing with as much turnover within the zoo that is the transfer portal, and players are treated at the same level of coaches. If they committed to something, they are required to stick it out, save the three exceptions.
The final layer lies in the amount of times a player is allowed to transfer. This would be limited to a one-time transfer opportunity, to eliminate the number of players jumping town to chase the bag. Players make a commitment to a program and sometimes it doesn’t work out. It happens for whatever reason that may be. They are given a chance t for a fresh start. If they desire to transfer on any further occasions, they will be required to sit out a year in the process and therefore lose a year of eligibility. This regulation keeps players from continuing to leave school year after year in pursuit of a “better opportunity” when in reality they are seeing who can cut them the biggest check.
Ultimately, collegiate athletes should be entitled to as much money as they are worth, however it shouldn’t be at the expense of coaches and programs having to rebuild their teams each year. By implementing these guidelines, players will be able to obtain financial compensation for their abilities, and coaches will be able to coach, not act as a CEO.