The college football transfer portal has officially reached a milestone I didn’t think it would ever hit, let alone in January, with months still remaining before the start of the 2024 season. With 2,266 players already entered into the portal, the number of players total to enter is already on track to blow past last year’s final number (2,724). It won’t be a shock at all if that number soars past 3,000 by the start of April and 3,500 by the end of Spring practices.
Yet, that isn’t the most interesting trend.
Of the 2,266 players who have entered the portal, there have already been 100 players who have withdrawn their names, making up 4.41% of the transfer pool.
Withdraw Numbers Shock the Transfer Portal Statistics
Before you say, “4.41% is a very low number,” consider this – when a player enters their name in the portal, they are essentially doing the same thing as when someone gives their two-week notice at an office job. People can’t just announce they are leaving to look for a higher paying job, just to crawl back a few weeks and say “never mind”.
Yet, here we are.
Essentially, 1 in every 20 players is saying they are going to leave for better NIL, playing time, or fit, and then looking around, finding nothing, and then saying, “Never mind, there actually isn’t anything better for me out there.”
This is supposed to be awkward and frowned upon. Yet, it is happening. And in case you’re wondering, no this hasn’t really happened before. Last year, only 1.83% of players came back. That is a 228% rise in players withdrawing, and that number has been slowly creeping up even higher in the last couple of weeks suggesting, we may easily hit 5% before the start of next season.
Where is the Accountability?
College football and the transfer portal in general are going to go in one of two directions:
- Everyone is going to enter the portal every single year and see if there are better opportunities. If there aren’t any better opportunities, they will just come back to their last school. Sure it may be awkward to do that if a player is the only guy in the locker room, coming back to his teammates trying to gain their trust again, but if everyone does it, is it really awkward?
- The other option is that a player can only enter their name in the portal once. If they return back to their original school, that counts as their one transfer. This will force players to be a bit more cautious about entering the portal.
Regardless of which direction this goes, there needs to be some kind of accountability with the transfer portal. We said players should get paid, they got paid. We said players should be able to transfer, they should be able to transfer. But guess what? Announcing you’re leaving and ultimately coming back isn’t the real world. Don’t believe me? Email your boss, say you’re leaving and then ask to come back in a few weeks. Actually don’t do that, because there will already be someone else at your desk.
A Thought on Transfer Portal Rules
The NCAA has said that the transfer portal window closed for most teams on January 2nd. If you look on any site such as 247 Sports or On3, you will see dozens of players entering the portal after the deadline from teams all over the country. In fact, on January 5th, the last day that players should have probably been entered into the database (commonly takes up to 48 hours), there were only 2,029 players, 257 players less than there are today.
Sure, some have been from Alabama or Washington who received extra time due to their coach leaving, and there may have been a player here and there who had crazy circumstances preventing paperwork from going through, but the vast majority appear to just be entering the portal despite the deadline.
Not very many people actually believe that the NCAA has any power anymore. We saw that in basketball this year when a judge ruled that transfers couldn’t be forced to sit out a year after transferring twice. If a player wants to transfer, they are entering regardless of what the “rules” say. And guess what? There’s a good chance they actually get penalized for it, or at least recent data has shown that.
Conclusion
College Football is entering a very dangerous stage. With players entering the transfer portal despite the deadline and now 100 players returning to their original school without any fear of consequence, things are about to get more wild and there may be some fans and coaches who decide to invest their interest into something more stable and reliable.
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