‘There’s shady stuff going on’: Dual transfer windows keeping college football rosters in flux

(Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a multi-part series by MTN Sports on the current state of college athletics.)

MISSOULA — Spring football workouts historically allowed players to earn their positions on the depth chart.

Coaches could move players up — or down — the two-deep based on their efforts during spring practices.

Now?

Coaches don’t even know which players from the spring practices will be on the roster come August. A second NCAA transfer portal window opens Wednesday.

“Some guys might leave, and some guys might get told to leave,” Montana coach Bobby Hauck said during a wide-ranging interview with MTN Sports. “That thing cuts both ways, too, now. If I don’t think you’re producing or going to produce, you’ve got to go in this day and age.”

There’s always been a cutthroat element to college athletics where winning almost always matters above all else, especially in the revenue-generating sports of football and men’s and women’s basketball. But, until now, it’s always worked on a consistent, predictable calendar.

A college football roster used to look mostly the same in March and April as it did in August, September, October and November, except for the high school recruits that joined the program over the summer. That’s no longer the case, as players have been given more autonomy to seek different opportunities and freely transfer between programs.

The Grizzlies saw starters like quarterback Logan Fife, receiver Sawyer Racanelli, linebacker Riley Wilson and cornerback Ronald Jackson, among others, enter the transfer portal during the first window in December.

The Montana State Bobcats were hit even harder by defecting players after they lost to North Dakota State in the FCS championship game in early January. At least 14 players entered the transfer portal, including All-Big Sky Conference performers Scottre Humphrey, Conner Moore, Rohan Jones and Andrew Powdrell.

Both teams will likely see more players enter the portal during this next window, which is open April 16-25, for a multitude of reasons. Some will leave for an improved chance at playing time or a better schematic fit. Others might leave for family reasons. Fewer will transfer for academic purposes.

But the chief motivator for many transfers is often financial. In the Big Sky Conference and the rest of the FCS, the best players might garner Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) earnings in the tens of thousands of dollars. At Power 4 programs, those figures can reach hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

“The majority of the people, those wearing the helmets, it’s whoever’s paying the most. I’m talking nationally now, OK? If people are paying them more, they’re going there,” Hauck said. “The idea nationally that most of these guys don’t know where they’re going before they put their name in the transfer portal is head-in-the-sand stuff.

“There’s shady stuff going on. People are recruiting people off other people’s rosters. You’ll see schools that are promising kids they’ve got X amount of money for them next fall, and they show up to play in August and they don’t have the money for them. And they’ve left their old school where they had a good gig.”

All this is to say that programs like Montana and Montana State are in a constant state of flux. They’re no longer operating on three- or four-year team-building plans. At some positions, they could be hitting the reset button twice a year — once after their regular season concludes in December or January and again in April or May.

“I think you still have to do everything you can to build each team in its own right, I guess, but then be able to build upon it so you do have this relative continuation of the foundation that’s been laid,” Montana State coach Brent Vigen said. “I do think still having a program built and then the teams that come out of it is still how we can operate, and maybe that’s easier said than done in this day and age.”

Justin Hosa / MTN Sports

With the portal opening this week — and Montana wrapping up its spring practices last week and Montana State continuing until April 26 — coaches will be tasked with hitting the recruiting trail again, this time combing through another batch of transfers while simultaneously hosting or visiting high school recruits and putting on camps.

Transfer recruiting will last well into the summer, with smart FCS-level programs waiting to pounce if a prospect doesn’t land his desired NIL deal from a major college football program.

To add to the strain, a formal ruling in the NCAA’s $2.8 billion settlement with collegiate athletes has not yet been made. According to the Associated Press, the terms of the settlement could go into effect as early as July 1, which would allow schools to directly pay athletes and establish a protocol for revenue sharing.

“There’s a lot of change that’s behind us. There’s a lot of change that’s continuing in front of us,” Vigen said. “If you don’t embrace the change, if you don’t adapt to the change, then you probably should be doing something else, so it’s just the nature of where we’re at.”

“The horse is out of the barn on this one, man, and there is no getting it back,” Hauck said. “But it can be reined in to some semblance of sanity at some point, but that’s not on the horizon just yet.”