As it stands right now, Indiana has four players on its roster. Three are transfers and the other is an incoming freshman. This means that next year the Hoosiers will have 13 new faces taking the court at Assembly Hall. Now there’s a chance that new head coach Darian DeVries may be able to convince a player or two to stay or that Luke Goode is granted another year of eligibility, but at most we are talking about two, maybe three, players returning. That in of itself is ridiculous, but I suppose that’s college basketball in 2025.
Two Sweet Sixteen teams this year, Arkansas and Kentucky, both had completely remade rosters. Intense roster turnover is now the norm. Teams are now hiring general managers as collegiate athletics are becoming increasingly professionalized.
Somewhere along the way, the transfer portal has morphed from its initial conceit to something much more malignant to college basketball. It’s true that sometimes a player needs to change schools, and I find this to be a more-than-justifiable reason for transferring.
But this year is different. Good, integral players on stable Power 5 teams are transferring at an alarming rate, for seemingly no reason. Bonafide superstars, conference players of the year, are putting their name in the portal. Players are switching teams for the sake of switching teams. If the NCAA doesn’t act quickly, I’m not sure that college basketball will be able to course correct.
I understand that this stance puts me at risk of sounding like an old man, upset with the way that college basketball is changing, but that is not the case. I am in favor of the transfer portal, I believe that athletes should not be pigeon holed. I recognize that some situations can become untenable, especially with the way college coaches can rule with an iron fist.
I also want to honor the players who were not originally sought after by power conferences, whose stellar play at the mid-major level allowed them to catapult themselves to better teams. To strip these players of opportunities that they deserve is unfair.
A tool for player movement
What I have a hard time tolerating and comprehending is players leaving a good situation for what seems like an unjustifiable reason. RJ Luis Jr. took his game to another level this season, he not only led St. John’s to a Big East title, but took home the Big East Player of the Year award. St. John’s was a No. 2 seed in the tournament, and while their run ended earlier than expected, they seemed poised to come back strong again next year.
Yet, Luis threw his name into the portal. It should be noted that Luis also declared for the draft, and in the game that knocked the Johnnies out of the tournament, the loss to Arkansas, Luis played abysmally and was benched. But his future at St. John’s was so bright, especially considering the fact that he has the fortune of being coached by an all-time great in Rick Pitino.
Or what about Tre Holloman, whose transfer portal announcement struck me more as an April Fools joke than reality? He seemed like the quintessential Tom Izzo Michigan State guard (he even looked uncannily similar to the great Cassius Winston).
Holloman so clearly bled green and white. He even started a scuffle during the last game of the season because Michigan players were standing on the Spartan logo, impeding the program’s tradition of seniors kissing the floor in their final home game.
I can’t seem to find a motive as to why Holloman would transfer. He has improved each year at Michigan State and the Spartans were a good team this year, securing a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Like Luis, Holloman also struggled in Michigan State’s tournament loss, and perhaps, to him, that was reason enough to transfer. Yet, if college basketball were in a healthy place, Holloman would graduate as a Spartan and get his chance to kiss the floor that he protected.
There are also cases such as Meechie Johnson. Johnson will be playing his sixth year of college basketball. His first five are as follows: years one and two at Ohio State, years three and four at South Carolina, year five back at Ohio State, and now next year he will be returning to South Carolina. It makes for a hilarious graphic, I don’t deny that, however it is saddening from a college basketball perspective.
Johnson’s level of flip-flopping is rare but makes you question if the transfer portal is even worth it anymore. The portal is no longer a tool for player empowerment, but instead a tool for player movement. Despite the fact that college athletics resembles the pros more than ever, they lack the rules and laws that give the pros stability.
Possible solutions
There needs to be a change, either by the NCAA or schools. Recently, former NBA player and Georgetown alum Roy Hibbert posited an interesting idea in regard to a change to the transfer rules. Hibbert suggested that, “it should be one and done, a new one and done rule.” In other words, athletes should be given the ability to transfer once, no questions asked, but that would be it.
While I don’t wholeheartedly agree with Hibbert, I believe that he has the foundations of what could be a good plan. Capping the amount of times a player can transfer would eliminate some of the issues the transfer portal has created. That being said, one time seems far too limiting.
It would make much more sense if athletes were allowed to transfer once with immediate eligibility and subsequent transfers would require the athlete to sit out an additional year. As it stands, nothing deters athletes from entering the portal. Making them watch from the sidelines for a year may change that.
One small addition to this rule could be that this one time transfer rule only applies to Division I athletes as to not hurt those such as Bennet Stirtz. A former Division II standout at Northwest Missouri State University, Stirtz transferred this past season to Drake University where he made himself known on a national level after a strong showing during the NCAA Tournament.
Stirtz followed his coach, Ben McCollum, from Northwest Missouri State to Drake, and is now joining him at the University of Iowa. I don’t think that it would be fair to hold out Stirtz for a year despite the fact that he has already transferred twice, because the first transfer was from the Division II to the Division I level.
Changing with the times
Regardless of how many amendments are made to the transfer rules, I fail to see a future where the transfer portal is not an integral part of college basketball moving forward. Perhaps the upcoming final hearing for House v. NCAA will usher in a new era where college athletics not only resemble but instead attempt to replicate pro sports.
A collective bargaining agreement and multi-year contracts could be on the horizon. College athletes may even be considered employees under the new revenue sharing rules, potentially opening the possibility of unionizing. Anything could happen.
Therein lies the central issue: no one knows what college athletics, let alone college basketball, will look like in five years. Whatever rules are created now could be obsolete in a matter of years. The amateurism of college sports is gone—they’ve changed with the times, and it’s probably time that us fans do the same.
