The FCS Daily Dose is a blog-style article series featuring an assortment of news, rumblings, quick hitters, and commentary on various topics.
A new Daily Dose will be published multiple times a week to keep the FCS discussion going throughout the offseason.
Don’t Expect Transfer Portal Restrictions Or Guardrails To Slow Down Player Movement
As the second window of the transfer portal begins, some fans who understandably aren’t paying attention to court cases or Division 1 Council meetings will be calling out for changes to the transfer portal.
I get it. Most college football fans just want to tailgate and watch their favorite teams play on Saturdays. All of this off-the-field chaos isn’t fun to track and be on top of. But those still hoping for transfer portal restrictions or guardrails will continue to be in for a rude awakening.
They aren’t coming.
The NCAA is basically powerless in enforcing its transfer portal rules. It’s also powerless in enforcing its NIL rules in terms of schools/collectives using it for inducements for transfers and recruits.
Collectives can legally communicate directly with players about what they can offer them to transfer to their school. And players can transfer multiple times without having to sit out. The Wild West, as some like to say.
This is due to court rulings that have struck down on the NCAA’s transfer portal and NIL restrictions.
And if you’re a casual college football fan just hoping for a return to normalcy, well, it’s going to get wilder.
Unlimited transferring is about to be the new norm.
For many years, athletes would have to sit out a season if they transferred unless they were a grad transfer or transferred down a level (like an FBS-to-FCS transfer or a D1-to-D2 transfer).
In 2021, the NCAA adopted the one-time transfer rule. It allowed athletes the ability to transfer one time and play right away, but that athlete would have to sit out a year if they transferred a second time.
That one-time transfer rule was challenged in court last year when some high-profile players had to sit out due to multiple transfers, which led to waivers and denials and appeals and battles between universities and the NCAA office.
In late 2023, seven state attorneys general sued the NCAA in the U.S. District Court for the northern district of West Virginia, arguing that the NCAA’s rule requiring multi-time transfers to sit out a year violates antitrust law. A federal judge agreed, issuing a temporary restraining order and then a preliminary injunction allowing multi-time transfer athletes the ability to play immediately.
That leads to this week, where the NCAA Division I Council, made up of school and conference administrators, may adopt legislation that allows all undergraduate athletes to transfer and play immediately as long as they meet academic requirements, no matter how many times they previously transferred. An obvious caveat is that a player can’t transfer during their season and be eligible to play for another team in that same season.
For those hoping the transfer portal will see some fixes and restrictions to slow down the player movement, the opposite is happening. An athlete can be at five different schools in five years with no penalty as long as they meet the academic requirements.
You can say that’s not what the transfer portal was originally intended for. And you’d be right. You can say cheering on your favorite mid-major school is getting harder and harder, and that it’s tough to buy into a program when there’s so much roster movement. And you’d be right. You can say you’re tired of getting asked to donate to your school’s NIL collective to help with player retention and then see a lot of athletes leave anyway. And you’d be right. You can question if college players care about leaving behind a legacy at their school, making lifelong college friends, or if all some care about is playing as quickly as possible and/or for as much money as possible. And you’d be right to question that.
But none of that matters when it comes to trying to put up some guardrails on the transfer portal. The courts have spoken.
The transfer portal isn’t good for fans. It’s hit or miss for schools. It’s treated some schools well, and some schools poorly. And for athletes? There is still plenty of good with the transfer portal. Most reasons for transferring are understandable. And a lot of transfers are grad transfers, which is the most understandable. But I don’t know many people saying a player being at 4-5 different schools in five years is OK athletically, academically, or socially.
That’s where things are at, though. And it isn’t changing anytime soon.
“The courts have made it clear that we are very limited in how restrictive we can be,” Missouri Valley Football Conference commissioner Patty Viverito said on my podcast. “And I think annual transfers are just part of the equation now. And it’s going to be part of how we operate.”
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Can UAlbany & Furman Sustain Success? + NC Central’s Devin Smith Commits To Villanova … READ MORE
Montana State’s OL Should Remain Top Tier Despite Transfer Losses, FCS Players In 5-Round Mock Draft … READ MORE
