This. When my son was attending Sacramento State, they had a guy on the football team who is excellent. A local kid, running back. Evidently, he was also great in high school. Lots of potential, but the school is in the wrong league and doesn’t play many high-profile opponents. Enter the portal and now he’s made a name for himself at ASU, and has elevated his profile enough to be mentioned on national sports broadcasts (they were gushing over him the other day from his bowl game performance, even tho ASU lost), and is on track to the NFL. He may have never been had that opportunity if locked in to Sac State.
The football fans I watched this game with seemed to think it also allowed bigger colleges to “poach” from smaller schools. I think they suggested that the school the player transferred to ought to pay the other school something to make up for the “development” of the player over the first 1-3 years.
They also suggested it was hard on fans of the smaller schools who did not get to enjoy the continuity of players their school drafted.
I have no opinion. Just relating what I heard.
With the new “pay” rules, I wonder how many of the transfers will be from small to big schools, as opposed to from lower to higher paying schools. In the bowl game I watched, each team had players sitting out due to the transfer portal. It isn’t as though they were denied an opportunity to show their ability - if their schools made it to a bowl game. I wonder if the few instances of “star at a small school” are being presented to cloak the true beneficiaries.
Cam Skattebo. Really? Wow! He won MVP of that bowl game despite the loss.
A fair amount of it goes the other way – the big-name schools often recruit more talent than can actually get playtime, and so a very highly regarded player may nevertheless end up riding pine because the #1 player in the country at his position also got recruited. But that backup would play every snap at another school.
Those fans are not wrong. That is the downside I alluded to. My wife went to Washington State University, and remains a big fan. This year she watched her school’s quarterback (who was fantastic) enter the portal almost the moment he was eligible, right after the last regular season game and before they got to play their bowl game. And almost immediately after, the head coach announced that he was going to another school and quit.
So then they play their bowl game with a temporary head coach and the backup quarterback, and while they lost the bowl game, that backup quarterback did extremely well! And then he too immediately went into the portal.
But it’s still better than it was before, when players were stuck toiling away on crappy teams. Not to mention being unable to make any income off of their football skills while the school might be making millions in revenue.
Today they can at least make money off of their name even if the school can’t pay them to play football, and they have a chance to go elsewhere to make a name for themselves if they have the talent.
I don’t think it’s a big money sport but college-level volleyball is actually entertaining and fun to watch. There’s a ton of strategy and those ladies hit the ball HARD. I’d totally watch it if it was a pro or semi-pro sport on TV.
Women’s college volleyball is actually the 4th-highest NCAA sport in NIL money after football and men’s and women’s basketball.
You’ve got three choices for pro women’s volleyball in the U.S. - Pro Volleyball Federation (8 teams) which played its first season last year and broadcasts some matches on the CBS Sports networks; League One Volleyball (6 teams) which is starting play this month and broadcasts/streams on ESPN networks; and Athlete’s Unlimited volleyball which has a pool of players who change teams every week - kind of a new concept, and again some matches can be streamed via ESPN.
We also have players leaving teams after they are stiffed on NIL payments.
In this case Louisville’s punter was promised money back in September and wasn’t paid, so he left the team a few days before graduating. And the article cites other players in schools who’ve done similar things.
My understanding is that the NIL system does not usually involve contracts unlike how pro athletes are paid. So when a player is promised money and isn’t paid, it’s difficult to collect. Also, there’s nothing forcing someone to play.
As time goes on, they are looking less like student athletes playing sports at a school they’re attending and more like professional athletes who don’t have contracts or any kind of properly structured payment system.