My last year as a junior-college head coach, a nearby Division 1 assistant watched an early-season practice and remarked, “Your team last year was so talented, you didn’t have to do anything. You’re actually going to have to coach now.”
I laughed off the remark, but, in my head, I thought:
If my team was so talented — it was, we sent six of eight transferring players to NCAA D1 schools, and it would have been seven if not for academics — why did you not recruit them? Six were high-school automatic qualifiers, which means they had three opportunities to recruit them — HS, after first year, after second year — but did not ask so much as a question about any. They even attended a practice the previous year in which they did not ask a single question about any player, but instead took notes on the drills and concepts, then asked questions about those.
When I recounted the story to a friend, I said, “If we had so much talent, you have to acknowledge I either out-evaluated and out-recruited them to sign all this talent or they were right to pass on them, and they developed that much in two years. Either way, their diss is saying I am a great recruiter or a greater skill developer, or they are admitting they are absolutely awful at their jobs. At least one of the three has to be true.”
I thought about this when making sense of the angst around the transfer portal. I wrote back in 2019 that the transfer portal would benefit bad coaches: “The transfer portal helps bad coaches and recruiters because (1) they get rid of mistakes after one or two years years instead of four; and (2) they sign older transfers to hide the lack of development in their programs.” I could add the portal hides red flags too. Pre-portal, people questioned programs with multiple outgoing transfers, but now everyone loses a few players each year; even programs with seven or more players transferring, half of their rosters, escape scrutiny. Instead, most direct their ire toward the players or the system, not the coaches.
The angst is the feelings of betrayal. Fans want to see the best players continue to play for their favorite schools. Coaches invest in players, and are hurt when players leave. They take it personally. Their identities and self-worth are wrapped up in their coaching, and a good player departing feels like a personal failure. Of course, the same coaches will not hesitate to encourage (force) a player to transfer out if they need a scholarship for a new, better player.
The coaches feel similar to my feelings when I recounted the story to my friend. They feel personally aggrieved because they found a hidden gem or worked really hard to build a relationship with a player who blossomed or signed an overlooked player and developed them, but as soon as the players have a better opportunity (better competition, money, exposure, pro preparation, chance to win, etc), they transfer. Coaches take this personally.
Junior colleges deal with this every year; it is the nature of the job, and the reason many do not stay long at the level (personally, it is my favorite level, and the best fit for my strengths). Sign a player, help them improve, and just as they are turning into a star, they graduate and transfer to a four-year school. The coach does the hard work, and someone else reaps the benefits. Many coaches feel the same about players leaving them for the transfer portal. They feel like they did something special — they out-evaluated, out-recruited, out-smarted, or out-developed their peers — but another coach benefits from their work. It feels unfair (of course, this sounds familiar to many AAU and high-school coaches; it is life as a coach. It is only new to four-year coaches who had complete control until a few years ago and still struggle to adapt to the new reality, which is the reality for the majority of coaches at every level).
From an overall, broader view, we should want the best players playing at the biggest schools in the biggest games. Of course, nobody agrees on who these schools should be or who deserves to be at the top, but one determination is the ones who spend the most to be the best. Money is a proxy for investment, whether in terms of facilities, travel, budgets, coaching staff, and more.
Everyone loves the story of a great talent at a small school, but the overall system is better when the best players play in the biggest games. Would this season be better if Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht was still at Northern Colorado and not in the NCAA Tournament? Or if Caitlin Clark’s backcourt running mate Molly Davis was watching from home after finishing her season at Central Michigan? Even a smaller school like Oakland University benefitted from Jack Gohlke transferring from a Division 2 program; do we have arguably the biggest moment of the first two days of the tournament without Gohlke seeking a bigger program? Would the overall game be better if he was in the NCAA D2 tournament (of course, it would be better for Hillsdale, where he started; there are two sides to every story. I am taking an utilitarianism view).
How does a program ascend when it loses its best players to bigger, better programs each year? Without the possibility to ascend, or the upsets from the low to mid majors, would college basketball lose its spark? While it may be competitively and financially beneficial for the blue bloods to be in the Final Four against each other every year (like MLB would benefit from Red Sox vs Yankees, and Yankees vs Dodgers every year), would it be as interesting?
Players leave professional clubs every year in every sport, but often the club losing a player receives compensation. In Major League Baseball, a team losing a top free agent to whom they offered a qualifying offer receives draft-pick compensation; a team losing a player in the Rule 5 draft, which is for players who have been with a team for four or five years but not on the 40-man roster, receives a $100,000 payment. An organization develops a player for several years, chooses not to add him to the roster, and receives compensation from the team who theoretically benefits competitively from the development. When a youth soccer player signs a professional contract with another club, the home club receives training compensation and potentially a solidarity payment from a future transfer. Again, the club who develops the player does not benefit competitively, but is compensated financially.
I have written about this for nearly 20 years in relation to European and United States youth development. Recently, Tristan Vukcevic signed with the Washington Wizards, and it was reported that Real Madrid and Partizan would split “seven-figure compensation”, which was the fee the Wizards paid to buy out his contract with Partizan; Real Madrid shared in the fee because he signed with Real Madrid as an U16 player and signed his first professional contract with Real Madrid. The NBA pays seven-figure compensations to reward the clubs for developing a professional player and to get out of his contract, but pays nothing to NCAA, NFHS, and AAU programs who develop the majority of NBA players because these levels have defined endpoints (free agency) based on the school system (and other reasons of employment, amateurism, the draft, and more). You can read more about financial rewards for development:
What would happen in terms of the transfer portal if programs paid a transfer fee to a player’s previous program? What if Tennessee, for example, paid $50,000 to Northern Colorado for Knecht to transfer? Naturally, administrators complain about lack of funds and so forth, but mediocre NCAA women’s players from low D1 programs have received offers over $50-75,000 from Power 5 programs recently. If programs can pay players $75,000, surely they can pay a transfer fee to the previous school.
Would coaches view the portal differently if they were compensated financially when they lost a player they discovered or developed?
My junior college shut down its athletics program when Covid started. A $50,000 development payment for the player who transferred to a Power 5 would have doubled our entire budget. We could have run an entirely self-sufficient women’s basketball team with small to large payments from NCAA Division 1 programs. We may have been able to increase the number of scholarships to compete with the fully-funded programs in our region or to travel to play other teams or to offer actual full scholarships instead of paying for some of their housing and some of their books in addition to tuition. Such payments would have allowed us to compete on a more level playing field.
The same could be true of a low Division 1 program who does a good job identifying and developing players. Sure, they would lose players for a few years, but they would raise money to sign new players, improve facilities, travel more, etc. to entice more and more better players. There would be a path to becoming a bigger program, one of the haves, whereas now, low major programs tend to stay low major programs and high major programs tend to stay high major programs.
At the end of the day, we should want the best players playing against the best, and our original system dictated who played at what level based on their status at 18 years old. It makes sense for better 22 year olds to move to bigger programs, but that does not make it less frustrating for the coaches and schools who invested in the player for three to four years. Some form of compensation is the best way to operate this new open system. If we are okay with one program essentially buying a player with an NIL deal, why not be in favor of the program compensating the homegrown program who initially identified the potential and developed the potential into the desirable player they are willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to transfer?
The current system is antiquated because many holding the last vestiges of their power want college sports to maintain an aura of amateurism, but that train has left the station. Caitlin Clark was on my television more during the men’s tournament, through her State Farm commercials, than any men’s player. She clearly is paid to play basketball, and therefore is not an amateur. Refusing to make other changes because presidents and commissioners want to pretend college sports is for amateurs is nonsensical, belies reality, and leaves many angst-ridden. Change with the times, and incorporate changing financial structures into the evolution of college sports to provide new and different pathways for the best to play the best, but also for new programs to become the best. The presidents and athletic directors killed tradition by destroying traditional conference alignment. Traditions and outdated notions of amateurism can no longer sustain interest in college sports in today’s age. Embrace the change and move forward.