Why The Transfer Portal Is Hurting High School Prospects
2 min readThose of you who have followed me for years, know that I work hard to help High School football athletes get an opportunity. When the transfer portal came out, I thought it would be a good thing.
Why not let athletes transfer if a coach leaves? Or if an athlete isn’t getting a fair shake? There is a problem with the transfer portal and it goes much deeper than opportunities gain or lost. It now
looks like High School Football players are not getting offers because college are saving them for transfers. On average schools are saving anywhere between 5-10 offer spots for transfers. It makes
sense for the coach, you can win now with high level recruits who were already offered by big time schools versus taking a high school recruit who is unknown. Here is the issue, if high school athletes
get less offers, then youth athletes are less likely to come out for football, because the perceived opportunity is less. If the perceived opportunity for scholarships begins to shrink in football, so will the talent pool.
If the talent pool shrinks then their will be less talent for program creating a greater divide between the top tier programs and the rest. The transfer portal has created a situation where the college coach
will take a look and save scholarships for transfers that might have otherwise gone to high school players they can develop. College coaches getting fired after only two bad season or even one could be a huge
factor as to why coaches don’t have time to develop high school athlete and will instead choose transfers. I think this is a flaw in the system and must be corrected. A solution should be a limited number of transfers that a FBS or FCS school can
take in a given season, will control the impact of the transfer port.