As a result of no NCAA enforcement over the parameters of the transfer portal, tampering is rampant in college football.
College athletes are essentially pawns for agents to shop around for more lucrative NIL opportunities as the season transpires.
Many programs have eliminated the spring game after players were scooped up following the scrimmages last year. The multiple portal windows confound the issue of roster building and retention.
A school might be highly confident in the makeup of their team and the needs of the offseason —unaware that the permeant tampering has already led to new holes the coaches aren’t anticipating.
Pete Nakos with On3 Sports (subscription required) has done an extensive series of surveys among anonymous Power Four personnel staffers and NIL collectives. He furthered his sources to include the perspective of agents in his latest update on the state of college football and tampering.
Perhaps the most concerning insight is the illumination that, frankly, the consensus finds it necessary in order to compete with the transformative sport.
While the focus was on the Power Four perspectives, many of them noted how much tampering takes place on the Group of Five level — especially to lower-level teams.
Group of Fives aren’t just in-house fighting but are also battling being decimated by Power Four roster poaching. It’s not subtle when tampering occurs.
Former Tulane Green Wave starting quarterback Darian Mensah entered the transfer portal the Monday it opened and was a Duke Blue Devil two days later. There’s no world where Mensah’s agents weren’t in contact with Duke, and within 48 hours, negotiated one of, if not the biggest NIL deals in college football to transfer.
Everyone points to the agents as the heart of the issue. Although coaches are prohibited from communicating with players in the portal, agents have been willing to pierce the veil with vague, if any, regulations.
“Nowadays, agents are calling you with a list of guys that are currently on rosters, and they’re saying, ‘Hey, here’s my list of 30 guys,” one Big Ten staffer said. “Let me know if you’re interested in any of them.’ As much as tampering is a problem, just in college football in general, the agent side of things is the biggest issue in my opinion, and they’re just doing their jobs. But it makes it tough.”
One source sagely points to the fact that the NFL is operating directly above them, with a model that works in free agency, but college football refuses to seek their guidance.
There are two trains of thought: the transfer portal system is either broken or the agents have figured out how to work it exactly as intended.
“It’s one of the bigger problems, if not, probably one of the main problems that people don’t want to talk about, because everybody’s doing it,” an SEC NIL collective member said. “It’s unfortunate. With the way these agents have figured out the model and football having two portal windows. Having the two portal windows just exacerbates the problem even more. And these kids are constantly in play because of the multiple portal windows. It’s really nonstop; it’s year-round. The players have plausible deniability. The coaches have deniability because, ‘Oh, I didn’t talk to the kid.’ But you and I both know there’s always a middleman that facilitates that.”
Anonymity typically leads to more candidness, and the agent was quite direct with his view on the necessity of tampering.
“You almost have to tamper,” the agent said. “A lot of these guys know where they’re going with a couple of weeks left in the season. People blame it on agents, but it’s the teams, too. To be a top-level school, you have to do it. That’s the only way to get ahead of things with this current model. It’s vital for teams to be successful. And if you’re not tampering, you’re going to lose. The only schools who are going to say that they don’t tamper are the ones who are sucking ass in the portal.”
It’s a fair point. The agents obviously stand to benefit most from player movement, as negotiations with programs that don’t currently have the coveted player typically lead to higher NIL deals.
There’s no ability for agents to tamper if the coaches aren’t receptive on the other end.
However, the perspective that it’s vital for success is only true due to the unregulated nature of the portal as it stands. There’s no standalone reason for tampering to be a requirement if there were consequences for doing so.
It makes spring practice all but performative in terms of roster assessment for the college football season.
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