Transfer Portal

[RABBLE]

I watched a lot of football on Saturday after going to Michie Friday night and all I heard from every announcer were the words, "Transferred from...."
I swear that in a few years, every player will have played at least two or more schools. One guy is on his third team!
I think it is the worst rule ever by the NCAA. No loyalty to your first school anymore. You don't know from one year to the next where your star player will be playing a year from now. If you want to switch to someplace else, sit out a year and pay a price for your move like it used to be.

[gabn92]

Watching the Clemson-Georgia game this weekend, and hearing some podcasts about the weekend...one point that is often made about Clemson is they are the only team other than the 3 service academies to not take any players from the transfer portal. When commentators are making that point, it is an indictment of Clemson coach Dabo Swinney.

4 teams in all of college football that didn't use the transfer portal last year. 3 of them have a good reason...no player wants to start their college academic career over by transfer to an academy, let alone the stringent entrance requirements and the service obligation.

So, the question for Army, Navy and Air Force is: are we going to collectively sit on our hands and let college football evolve and leave the service academies at a further disadvantage, or is there something that can be done?

Here's my proposal for consideration:

Since the Service Academies can't bring new players in through the "side-door" using the transfer portal, they need to do something provide a way to keep more players at the end of their time at the academy...meaning more 5th year players. Make greater use of the December graduation period to allow more players that final season of eligibility. Consider the creation of a master's degree program to allow a few to remain for an additional year, allowing them to play a full season in the fall but possibly get 4 academic terms (summer, fall, winter, summer) after graduation towards earning a master's degree. The academies "win" by keeping a few more players with experience/talent; the services "win" by getting a few more graduates with graduate degrees to enter the force.

There may be better ideas out there, but if nobody is thinking and considering options...we're in trouble. The transfer portal is a huge disadvantage to the service academies, and we already have enough disadvantages to work through. If we want to try and field reasonably competitive teams, we need to be thinking about how can we continue to adjust to the changing dynamics of college football to give our service academy teams the greatest chance to compete as reasonably possible.

[PrideandDream]

No doubt college football is undergoing revolutionary change. Some of it is for good reason. Some of it maybe not. This whole thing has been coming for a while but my contention is that once schools started selling tickets and popcorn for games then it was inevitably going to get to this point.

I contend that without some kind of government intervention and some kind of antitrust protection like Major League Baseball has that in a matter of years "College" football players will be employees and not students. They will have a Union and they will have a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) just like the NFL. The SEC and Big 10 will likely unite to become one governing body and collect all the revenues and will be modeled just like the NFL. This is my rough theory on where it's headed and not perfect by any measure. But in this scenario players will be employees, not students. Eligibility won't matter. Players will get relegated, some to the NFL if there is opportunity and money and some just will get cut. Some will get recruited in but I think that number is going to get smaller and smaller. Once there is a CBA the rosters will shrink as well. Will it go as far as 53 like the NFL? Doubtful but it won't be 105 if the players are fighting over a pot of money.

Now having said all that, here is how I think the SAs would survive if they saw fit. And boy are people going to hate this idea....players will be employees. So Army, Navy, AF, football players would be government contractors or even active duty officers. Depending on where you wound up with the teams left behind from the SEC and Big 10, our governing body could allow both. Now wait for it, instead of branching into Infantry or Field Artillery, you would branch into "USMA Athlete". Wild idea? Not really USMA Professors have a unique designation that allows them to stay and serve a specific functional purpose. Why not an athlete? Now ready for this? I imagine part of your commitment being that you had to make the team? In other words imagine we still bring in a large recruiting class. And guys develop and play for 4 years as students but then they compete with guys who have graduated. And let's say you are a 1st LT on your 7th year of football and you get beat out in camp to last year's senior. And there isn't a roster spot for you. Well off you go to OBC to fulfill your commitment and what's left or wherever the Army may need you. Or maybe you are 27 and played your full commitment of 5 years and are now out but still a great player and you now become a government contractor under contract with the AWPAA and get paid to play? I mean there are a ton of scenarios here but many could work. Im sure I'm missing a thousand challenges here so I look forward to hearing other ideas.

Ok, I know the argument about serving and what they signed up for. And I'm not saying I disagree. In a perfect world we could still do both. But what I think is going to happen is we will find out just how committed we are to having a platform on the national stage to promote the SAs. We can go the route of the ivies but we have some built in disadvantages vs them. Endowment is one and the unique idea of service to the nation is the other. And that service is often best displayed and that story told often times by the national attention the SAs draw through sports and particularly football. But we will have to address whether we value being in or out at some point in my opinion.

Ok lastly, I will say this. This whole thing is falling apart becuase schools turned football and basketball into a business and didn't share the revenues with their players. Even when the revenues per play far exceeded the value of the education. Of which many schools undermined the real education and its value any way (whole other topic). So the real question will be at what point does West Point and AFA and Navy have to deal with that issue? And maybe they don't but I wouldn't be surprised if at some point there's a specific lawsuit targeted at the revenue that is produced for these schools by these players. I'm not saying it's right I'm just saying I won't be surprised when that chicken comes home to roost.

This is all a mess and I'm afraid ruining what was at one point a fantastic product and an amazing sport for young men.

PD

[neumanna1]

No doubt college football is undergoing revolutionary change. Some of it is for good reason. Some of it maybe not. This whole thing has been coming for a while but my contention is that once schools started selling tickets and popcorn for games then it was inevitably going to get to this point.

I contend that without some kind of government intervention and some kind of antitrust protection like Major League Baseball has that in a matter of years "College" football players will be employees and not students. They will have a Union and they will have a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) just like the NFL. The SEC and Big 10 will likely unite to become one governing body and collect all the revenues and will be modeled just like the NFL. This is my rough theory on where it's headed and not perfect by any measure. But in this scenario players will be employees, not students. Eligibility won't matter. Players will get relegated, some to the NFL if there is opportunity and money and some just will get cut. Some will get recruited in but I think that number is going to get smaller and smaller. Once there is a CBA the rosters will shrink as well. Will it go as far as 53 like the NFL? Doubtful but it won't be 105 if the players are fighting over a pot of money.

Now having said all that, here is how I think the SAs would survive if they saw fit. And boy are people going to hate this idea....players will be employees. So Army, Navy, AF, football players would be government contractors or even active duty officers. Depending on where you wound up with the teams left behind from the SEC and Big 10, our governing body could allow both. Now wait for it, instead of branching into Infantry or Field Artillery, you would branch into "USMA Athlete". Wild idea? Not really USMA Professors have a unique designation that allows them to stay and serve a specific functional purpose. Why not an athlete? Now ready for this? I imagine part of your commitment being that you had to make the team? In other words imagine we still bring in a large recruiting class. And guys develop and play for 4 years as students but then they compete with guys who have graduated. And let's say you are a 1st LT on your 7th year of football and you get beat out in camp to last year's senior. And there isn't a roster spot for you. Well off you go to OBC to fulfill your commitment and what's left or wherever the Army may need you. Or maybe you are 27 and played your full commitment of 5 years and are now out but still a great player and you now become a government contractor under contract with the AWPAA and get paid to play? I mean there are a ton of scenarios here but many could work. Im sure I'm missing a thousand challenges here so I look forward to hearing other ideas.

Ok, I know the argument about serving and what they signed up for. And I'm not saying I disagree. In a perfect world we could still do both. But what I think is going to happen is we will find out just how committed we are to having a platform on the national stage to promote the SAs. We can go the route of the ivies but we have some built in disadvantages vs them. Endowment is one and the unique idea of service to the nation is the other. And that service is often best displayed and that story told often times by the national attention the SAs draw through sports and particularly football. But we will have to address whether we value being in or out at some point in my opinion.

Ok lastly, I will say this. This whole thing is falling apart becuase schools turned football and basketball into a business and didn't share the revenues with their players. Even when the revenues per play far exceeded the value of the education. Of which many schools undermined the real education and its value any way (whole other topic). So the real question will be at what point does West Point and AFA and Navy have to deal with that issue? And maybe they don't but I wouldn't be surprised if at some point there's a specific lawsuit targeted at the revenue that is produced for these schools by these players. I'm not saying it's right I'm just saying I won't be surprised when that chicken comes home to roost.

This is all a mess and I'm afraid ruining what was at one point a fantastic product and an amazing sport for young men.

PD

Good post. This is an incredibly complicated situation that too many want to solve by yelling that things should just go back to how it was decades ago, despite that being impossible for a litany of reasons.

You hit the nail on the head by saying this has been coming since schools started selling tickets. College athletics haven’t been the amateur endeavor the NCAA liked to pretend they were for at least 75 years now, probably more. Once everyone involved started getting rich except for the people playing the games, that whole argument was null and void. And the whole “They get paid with a free education” line may be correct when you talk about a volleyball player, when you’re talking about Alabama football, no, their scholarship is not adequate compensation for what they generate.

I don’t pretend to have any good answers to this stuff, especially as it relates to the Service Academies, but I appreciate someone taking a nuanced look at it, and acknowledging the current realities.

[JKillerK]

Always lurking is the NFL. If this starts to affect them and their profits all hell will break out. The loser will be college football

[PrideandDream]

Good point about the NFL. However I do wonder how much overlap there is. The NFL is a bad football product driven by Fantasy Teams and Gambling. I know there is overlap but it is also a fundamentally different audience as it's built for fairly different demographic and has different regional followings. But if college continues to grow and go professional there will be a rub in there somewhere.

[wpgrad]

As the parent of a current P4 athlete, and as a former coach of multiple other p4 players who played with my child, my summary is......for the high level SEC/ACC/B10 type of programs, what you are seeing in 2024 barely resembles the sport you watched in 2018. Not sure how closely you all watch things like the portal and NIL money....but it is absolute chaos. You have teams like Ohio State (20million) and Florida State (12m) that are paying football players THIS YEAR more than mid majors might have in their ENTIRE sports budget.

The scandal that rocked SMU in the 1980's....well...that is just the norm in today's sports, times 100. I have experienced first hand schools just blatantly contacting an athlete and saying, hey, you come here next year, we'll give you a scholarship and 100 grand (for the elite players, its 500 grand or 1M or more. P4 starting quarterback are making over a million).

The end result is what P&D stated: probably by around 2030 when TV contracts are running out or changing, you are going to see some type of 48 team (or 64) super league. I see conferences merging, and I see bottom end schools like the Vandy and Rutgers of the world getting dropped from their league. Anyone left out of this superleague is going to be second tier, including Army, and those within the superleague are going to have some type of "employee" type situation with unions, etc just like the NFL and MLB.

Not a matter of if, just a matter of when it happens. The good new is that for the second tier schools, hopefully they return to some type of sanity. However, not going to look good when a school spendings $25million on an indoor sports facilty only to be left out of the superleague

[ArmyRoadFan7]

Good point about the NFL. However I do wonder how much overlap there is. The NFL is a bad football product driven by Fantasy Teams and Gambling. I know there is overlap but it is also a fundamentally different audience as it's built for fairly different demographic and has different regional followings. But if college continues to grow and go professional there will be a rub in there somewhere.

According to a recently fired NFL executive their fans are “high school educated alcoholics.” Or “mouth breathers.”

[PrideandDream]

Agree with these comments WPGRAD

Also tend to agree with the poor assessment of the average NFL fan. I just hate to cast the net that wide because I think a lot of good folks like the NFL but don't understand it. I also think that at its very core that the fan base is very....well let's just say "unsophisticated". Not all but many. And I think on the whole more so than the college game. However, there is certainly a huge element to the college game that might fall into that same bucket. I know a lot of people that pull for Alabama and can't find Tuscaloosa on a map.

PD

[WrekDivr]

You may not like the NFL, but nothing comes close to their viewership.