Is it just me, or when you come up with a mental image of the NCAA’s transfer portal, it’s a port-a-let?
Fits. Because most of the college players using the portal have flushed away their careers.
Over 11,000 football players entered the portal this winter. About 6,800 are stuck there, and in the vast majority of cases, they cannot walk it back. Coaches have already allocated their roster spots to newcomers, whether they are transfers or even old-school signees.
The percentage is even worse for basketball players. Fewer roster spots, a higher rate of portal delusions.
In the X-box generation of sports, young athletes are used to hitting the reset button. It’s a habit formed before they get to high school.
There’s an overload of games, often a half-dozen or so a weekend for travel teams. The sting of losing does not linger for very long. And there’s the constant chance to jump ship to another travel team or even school if Little Larry isn’t getting the playing time he needs – forget considering if he deserves it.
Travel ball isn’t new, but it’s never been this prevalent. It used to be summer ball but it’s spread faster than the Indiana Hoosiers football fan base.
It’s not totally terrible. There are positives and there are people who do it the right way, for the right reasons.
If your kid wants to play, and it’s financially feasible, tough to say “no.” At some point, I believe another word that should come up at least occasionally is “enough.”
There’s not only purity in backyard ball, pickup games at the park, and a lack of daily structure putting youngsters on a schedule from breakfast to bedtime. Freestyling sports and down time gives kids the chance to figure out things on their own, to be creative, to make their own fun.
Does anybody play kick-the-can around the carport lights these days? Red Rover Come Over? Or just a good 3-on-3 whiffleball game in the neighbor’s yard?
There’s a lot of (depending on how you see it) far-reaching (or far-fetched) long-term implications for the healthiest development of kids. Youth sports are an American standard; the grown-ups’ challenge is to not let them deteriorate into constant competition where the final score is the end-all be-all, instead of the final outcomes producing positive life lessons and lots of fun.
Jumping back to the college scene, this portal porn has fouled up so much of what we’ve enjoyed.
Bo Lamar died this week. You old-timers might remember him – the real Ragin’ Cajun, a guard who was for USL basketball what Pistol Pete Maravich was at LSU.
Pistol was flashier, played at a higher level, was other-worldly from the day he took the court for the Tigers. He’s the all-time college basketball scoring king and that was just one phase of his game.
Bo (real name Dwight) led the NCAA in scoring just after Pete moved into the pros. Pete averaged 44 points in his LSU career. Bo put up 31.2 per game for the Cajuns, scoring 3,493 points.
“Bo Lamar is the purest shooter I’ve ever seen,” said Jerry Tarkanian, who saw a bunch in his Naismith Hall of Fame coaching career.
Pistol and Bo set records never to be broken. They’re absurdly out of reach.
But now with the portal in place, we won’t see very many career records topped anywhere in any major team sport. The good players will keep moving up the pay scale, changing teams 2-3-4-5 times (or more).
The classifications freshman, sophomore, junior and senior are obsolete. The NCAA is allowing transfers to play for 5-6-7 years, even more, and at just as many colleges.
That’s the next iteration of travel ball.
The cash chase drives transfers. The need for NIL funds peaks with the super powers but every one of the 360-or-so Division I schools is trying to combine donor money with the new NCAA revenue share to reward current players and entice new ones.
It’s going to take a few years before the people who feed the NIL accounts get weary of barely knowing the college kids they’re helping pay, and frustrated when their generosity doesn’t produce enough wins.
Collective bargaining for the big boys, and some long overdue humble pie and common sense for everybody else, better come quickly if college sports in the ‘30s will look anything like it did just a few years ago, or like it does today.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com