Clemson football: Transfer portal hurts more athletes than it helps

By now we know it’s factually false that Dabo Swinney and Clemson football “won’t use the transfer portal” as the man is on record (and camera) as saying Clemson offered two offensive lineman this spring and weren’t successful in getting either to come to Clemson.

The fact that Dabo won’t offer ten, twenty, thirty or whatever magical number would please the masses and talking mouths around college football is a different story.  But to say Clemson won’t offer, and accept, transfers is not the truth and saying otherwise shows your bias, ignorance or both.

Now word has come from the NCAA that only 54% of FBS players that entered the portal have enrolled at a new school.

"In a move to provide more transparency with regard to the transfer portal, the NCAA released statistics and information for the years 2020 and 2021 that shows only 54% of FBS players who entered the portal enrolled at a new school."

For every Caleb Williams raking in the millions, there’s someone that gave up a scholarship for… absolutely nothing.

I’m for the portal.  I believe players should transfer whenever they like, just like I could have when I was a regular, non-athlete student.

That, however, doesn’t mean there aren’t risks and drawbacks and maybe we should take a step back and figure out the best way to move forward in the interest of the players who are giving up their chance at a college education for, in many cases, a pipe dream.

Yet, TV and radio shows, podcasts and online college football shows hosted by national media “personalities” and supposed journalists all tell us how great the transfer portal is and very rarely spend more than 3 seconds of lip service to the drawbacks.  That would be bad for business.

They spend hours analyzing Caleb Williams and Quinn Ewers, but not a second on the hundreds and hundreds of players that are left out because they took bad advice or were encouraged to transfer after watching or listening to their self-serving drivel about the wonders of the portal.

"In the research the NCAA conducted, it shows that only 59% of scholarship FBS football players who entered their name in the transfer portal transferred to another school and received a scholarship at the next destination. Among those scholarship players who entered the portal, 33% (834) still remain active and 8% transferred without athletic aid."

These are the people that “care” about college football and the athletes that play it.  Right.

Just because 59% transferred to a new school and received a scholarship doesn’t mean 59% improved their situation.  As happens when you or I change jobs with the hope of a better situation, sometimes, often times I would argue, things are worse at the new place, even if I still get paid.

Just like almost everything else in America, there’s a small percentage of athletes and large number of media benefiting from this change while a majority of athletes suffer, encouraged by stories of getting rich or the promise of a starting position.

There’s also one person with a voice standing up for the 834 (and counting) student athletes who gave up a scholarship for…nothing, and he gets blasted for it by self-serving media who happily write the next “Dabo is horrible” story and reap the clicks.