The question posed to the Big Ten coach wasn’t meant to be funny. It was a straight-forward query: Are players being tampered with before they enter the transfer portal?
The coach laughed. Loudly. And long.
“It's going on everywhere,” he said. “It's probably more straight up talking to the kids or even having a friend on the team do it. It’s not just a high school coach.”
Welcome to college football, 2022.
A convergence of the transfer portal and NIL has turned the landscape into a no-holds-bared melee when it comes to procuring talent.
“In this world that we live in in college athletics, college football specifically, we have the portal, the grad transfer, the NIL, three major changes in college football all working at the same time,” said Illinois coach Bret Bielema. “And it's a disaster because no one knows what the reactions of all those other things are going to be.”
The advent of the transfer portal—launched in October 2018—was a noble endeavor intended to allow free movement of players, who are permitted to transfer one time and maintain immediate eligibility.
NIL also had good intents when it was legalized in July 2021, with players able to make money from doing advertisements, camps, autograph sessions, social media posts and the like.
But it quickly has morphed into a recruiting inducement, which is not permitted. NIL deals must be struck with players already on rosters. That’s the way NIL was intended to be used. If not, NCAA violations could be handed out.
A task force to police NIL could be on the horizon, according to a recent report by SI.com. The conundrum: How would rules be enforced? There also is a report that the commissioners of the Pac-12 and SEC will travel to Washington, D.C., today to lobby for federal NIL legislation.
“I've heard a lot of stories,” said a second Big Ten head coach. “It's pretty disturbing about how guys have been tampered with and it really bothers me. We're working really hard to do everything the right way here and it's pretty frustrating to know that it sounds like it's pretty rampant out there right now.
“And I don't think anybody's ever seen any situation where someone's been reprimanded for it. So, if you're not going to have any penalties, and I think it's gonna keep getting worse.”
Schools aren’t supposed to contact players on rosters until they are in the transfer portal. When that happens, it’s game on. Players can field e-mails, take calls and go on visits.
However, the Big Ten head coaches contacted for this story all sung a similar refrain: Players are being contacted before they enter the portal.
Tampering.
Players often are being told if they jump in the portal, there will be a spot for them at another school. And the sales pitch is often times sweetened by promises of name, image and likeness inducements. Again, NIL never was instituted to be used as a recruiting lure. But, it has become just that since its inception last summer.
“I'm sure there's a lot (of tampering,)” said a Power Five head coach. “NIL is terrific. The transfer portal is terrific. But too much of one thing is a bad thing. And not only that, when NIL and transfer portal recruiting collide, that's kind of where I'm sure we're at in a lot of different places.”
The stories of NIL being used as a recruiting tool to land a player are growing more stunning with each passing day.
“We sat in these national meetings and said this is exactly what was going to happen and the responses were: 'No, it wasn’t,' ” said a third Big Ten head coach. “That there'd be guard rails put around it. And our biggest concern was, if this goes down the road, you're taking education out of it completely.
"And, you know, without any guardrails, who knows what it could become? It doesn't mean it's gonna be bad, but it's not gonna be this clean, easy, autograph sessions, jersey (sales). I think it fell on ears that weren't willing to listen.”
The recent case of Pitt receiver Jordan Addison has created a buzz. Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi has reportedly suspected that USC has tampered by reaching out to Addison before he entered the transfer portal. Addison has yet to pick a school.
“It took one recruiting cycle to get there,” the third Big Ten head coach continued. “Where's it gonna go? I don't know that answer. I think this level of athletics in the macros is pretty darn close to a tipping point. And I don't know what that destination is. But I know where we're currently at. I would predict one will not be in this same space. It just is unsustainable.
“As a head coach, you can't come out against it because you just get crushed. Your donors are eventually not going to be paying. This is not an endless well of cash. And, you know, if some of these rumors are true of what some of these guys are doing for pay for play with recruiting and these prospects end up not being good players, which odds are that some of them are not, how are these donors going to react?”
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