Over the last few years, the expansion of the transfer portal and name, image, and likeness (NIL) have changed the landscape of college athletics drastically. There are plenty of arguments that proponents make in favor of these changes: the ability of athletes to earn a living off the use of their name and image and the increased opportunities for an athlete to find a school or team that fits him or her best.
Ask many coaches and most fans, and they’ll tell you that the transfer portal and NIL in their current Wild West state are detrimental to college sports. I, for one, loathe the lack of loyalty too many players have to the programs that first signed them. As I wrote in February (see the related link below):
It used to be that you could expect a college athlete to stick around a program for four or five years and make a name for himself or herself. The transfer portal and name, image, and likeness (NIL) have made loyalty to a single program almost quaint these days.
We’ve seen the rise of what I call the “transfer sluts,” those players who change uniforms regularly. We’ve seen players chase dollars — and get big money. And we’ve seen the landscape of college athletics shift dramatically.
In February, I wrote about Montana linebacker Solomon Tuliaupupu, whom the NCAA granted a ninth year of eligibility. Last year’s starting quarterback at Miami, Carson Beck, admitted that he had graduated two years prior and that he was just playing football. Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss went to court to get a sixth year of eligibility, which served him well until this past weekend, when he faced the buzzsaw that is the Georgia Bulldogs (just saying).
Related: How Long Is Too Long? College Football Tests the Limits of Eligibility.
What if the drawbacks of a loose transfer portal are beginning to rear their ugly heads? The NCAA released data this week that demonstrated that student-athletes who transfer more than once have a noticeable drop in graduation rates. For Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) players — the highest level of college football play — the decrease was 27%!
“The statistics analyzed the six-year graduation rate — considered on time when redshirts and other factors were weighed in — for around 36,000 athletes who enrolled in college in the 2018-19 school year,” reports the Associated Press.
“The data showed that regardless of race, gender, or sport, multiple transfers typically had graduation rates 10 percentage points lower than those who transferred once and 15 to 20 percentage points lower than peers who never transferred,” the AP report continues.
NCAA President Charlie Baker said that this data should demonstrate how detrimental the wide-open transfer portal is to athletes.
“This data should serve as a flashing red warning sign that the court-imposed transfer rules are resulting in worse academic outcomes for many student-athletes,” he said. “But thankfully Congress is closer than ever to passing a bill to reverse this trend.”
But is Congress really “closer than ever” to passing the Protect College Sports Act? Despite broad bipartisan support for the bill in the Senate, the act has been less than certain in the House. And with Democrats taking over in January, who knows what they’ll do? There aren’t any provisions in the act that will stick it to Donald Trump, so it probably won’t be a priority.
This is just one indicator, of course, but it’s a big one. The idea of getting a scholarship to play a sport in college is to graduate eventually, but that’s not happening as often when athletes hop from school to school. Granted, many athletes go pro, but the decreased graduation rates for multi-transfer players should raise serious questions about whether the fast-and-loose transfer rules are as beneficial as proponents claim.