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A sea of names.
That’s a good way to describe the NCAA transfer portal, which grows each day as student-athletes hop in looking for a better opportunity.
Some fear the portal—along with recent legislation passed by the NCAA to allow all student-athletes the ability to transfer one time and be immediately eligible—isn’t a good thing for college sports. Too much chaos, too disruptive, too many unknowns.
Not Purdue athletic director Mike Bobinski. He embraces it. He's all for it.
“I have favored it because I think it was indefensible, to me, to have one set of regulations for 20 sports, and another set of regulations for four or five other sports,” Bobinski told GoldandBlack.com.
This one-time transfer exception has been available to athletes in other NCAA sports for years, permitting them to transfer and play immediately without having to sit out a year. But athletes in football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s ice hockey and baseball have had to sit out a year if they transfer and ask the NCAA for a special waiver to gain immediate eligibility.
No more.
Earlier this month, the NCAA Division I Council voted to change the long-standing rule that has often deterred players in high-profile sports from switching schools.
“We’ve been doing this in every sport other than football, men's, women's basketball and most recently baseball, that has been available now—the one-time transfer—has been available for years and years and years and it hasn't turned those sports on their ear,” said Bobinski.
There are over 1,500 men’s basketball players in the portal. Football has even more, with over 3,200 entrants.
“I think it's going to be like lots of things,” said Bobinski. “I think there’s chaos raining at this point in time. And I think there's going to be a reality check that's going to happen here where you've got whatever the number is, for instance in men's basketball, you hear there's 1,200 players or whatever that is some outrageous number of folks that have put their name in the transfer portal.
"Well, there aren't 1,200 opportunities out there. So, just like a game of musical chairs, when the music stops, not everybody's gonna have a chair. And I think once that reality sets in … “
Purdue has seen its share of players in football and basketball enter the portal.
“Now that we're doing it in the most high profile sports, everybody's level of anxiety ramps up dramatically,” said Bobinski. “But it's been existing for years and again, it's worked out fine.
“But to say that you can do it in some sports, and not others, and particularly when those other sports happen to be sports that are populated by lots of minority student-athletes, and you say that what these other kids over here can move around but you all can't just, to me, there was no way to defend that.
"I think it's just a matter of basic fairness, in my opinion.”
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