Are you in the transfer portal yet?
Why not? Can’t shoot? Can’t jump? Can’t defend? Neither can some of the college basketball players among the hundreds who declared their independence Monday on Hoops PortalPalooza Day 2025.
They’re looking for some new program to fit their skill sets – or if they’re upwardly mobile, their NIL desires. At least, they want a fresh start.
Before the window closes, it’s reliably estimated that about 2,000 NCAA Division I men’s players will be in the market for new gear, uniforms and all the sparkly things. Consider there were about 6,900 guys hooping it this year, and let’s say maybe 1,200 are seniors or graduate students whose college days are over when the season is. Then there are at least a couple hundred who rightfully don’t see the ROI on lacing them up anywhere.
By that etch-a-sketch ciphering, roughly one in three guys on your team’s roster will dip his toes into the portal this offseason. Print out that roster this morning, and check it next November. The majority of Division I college sports is evolving into the Cape Cod League in summer baseball – new rosters every year.
This is just the men’s side of things. The same shuffle rate will take place in the women’s game.
School career records are as good as set in stone. Few if any players who produce big stats will stay put long enough to leave multi-year marks.
There is great wailing and gnashing of teeth among the old heads of college hoops about this.
But those coots don’t mind a bit when their good-ole-boys in the coaching world are playing footsie with other schools while coaching their current teams.
Correction, their agents are the ones doing the talking. These days, 99 percent of the people not in uniform on the bench have agents – a slightly higher percentage, it seems, than the amount of players who do.
New Orleans native Stan Verrett, who anchors ESPN’s Los Angeles SportsCenter, nailed it on his X account: “Can’t blame the players for exercising the same rights as coaches to move if they get a better offer, and the same rights as everybody else to feed at the financial trough of big money college athletics. Schools and conferences get their profit, but it costs them control.”
If only Shreveport’s iconic network broadcaster Tim Brando could take over as the Czar of College Sports, he would be wise to name future Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive end J.J. Watt to his executive committee.
Wrote Watt on X: “At some point the NCAA needs to drop the ‘student first, athlete second’ charade. Billions of dollars, NIL, transfer portal (free agency), traveling cross country for midweek games … education is not the main focus. Admit it and call it what it is. A business. Run it as such.”
As for the portal opening in the middle of March Madness: “… (same as football portal opening before bowl season ends) is preposterous. Literally cannibalizing your own sport. Imagine NFL free agency starting the Monday after Wild Card Weekend.”
Tweeted Timmy B: “… a reminder how little the NCAA really cares about what’s good for the sport that basically funds them. A clear disconnect …. The NCAA remains a neocolonial outfit that couldn’t care less about the future of the young men and women they rely on to perform for them.”
The NCAA leadership punted on these emerging issues years ago, and now the marketplace is fluctuating while the courts and politicians are stumbling forward, vainly trying to establish parameters.
I’ve got altruistic friends, people I respect, who say, hold on – those players get scholarships and free, or discounted, college educations. That’s enough of a tradeoff, they say. As those NCAA promos we see during March Madness tout, 98 percent of the players aren’t going pro.
But it doesn’t balance, not when top-end salaries for Power 4 football head coaches range between $10-13 million a year, and average coordinator salaries are $1 million. Not when McNeese pays just departed basketball coach Will Wade $700,000 and he understandably bolts for $6 million per season at N.C. State. Not when three college football head coaches in our state not named Brian Kelly average $1 million per.
For the glamour guys and girls in college sports, the rewards are ample. In women’s basketball, no surprise that rapper/fashionista and superstar player Flau’Jae Johnson of LSU leads the way with a $1.5 million NIL valuation, ahead of fellow celebs like U-Conn’s Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins of USC.
If you haven’t heard yet, Watkins just became a poster child for maximizing income at every opportunity. Monday night, the player some consider the game’s most gifted tore the ACL in her right knee in an NCAA Tournament game against Mississippi State.
Southern Cal is the No. 1 seed in the women’s field. Watkins’ loss is a huge blow for those national title hopes. It’s also a huge worry for her future. Yes, knee surgeries have a very good recovery rate these days, but there are no guarantees.
If her USC coach gets hurt, Lindsay Gottlieb’s $1 million salary won’t evaporate. There’s a multi-year contract, something that Watkins might have with her NIL deals – but only the Gucci stars of college sports rate, not the rank and file, and not even the cream of the crop. Just royalty. Watkins is that.
There’s a very modest injury insurance required for all NCAA competitors, but it’s relatively inconsequential. If Watkins turns out to be the Randy Livingston of the women’s game, we can only hope she invested most of the NIL money she’s already made.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com