College Football Coaches Created a Crisis, That Only They Can Solve

As of February 5, 2019, 1,454 Division I college football players (FBS and FCS) have entered the new NCAA “Transfer Portal.” The Portal is supported by most players and verbally denounced by coaches. Ironically, although football coaches routinely express anger towards the portal in front of the press, they are the culprits to its increased use.

The Transfer Portal for football players was officially released on October 15, 2018. The opening of the Transfer Portal was accompanied by a significantly more lenient college football transfer policy. In past years a player had to ask for permission from their current school to leave and had to “demonstrate egregious behavior by a program or truly extraordinary circumstances . . ..” Now under the new policy a player must meet the following requirements in order to transfer:




1. Player must be academically and athletically eligible




2. Player must not receive any opposition from the school they are leaving




3. And “show the transfer is due to documented mitigating circumstances that are outside the student-athlete’s control and directly impact the health, safety and well-being of the student-athlete.”




It would appear that these requirements would be hard to meet, especially when considering there isn’t any precedent set for what constitutes “mitigating circumstances.” However, according to an ESPN article written by Adam Rittenberg and Tom VanHaaran, “[t]he NCAA’s most recent data points a positive picture for those who actually go through the waiver-application process . . . 79.7 percent received approvals.” The lenient policy is the first major win for the “free” labor in the multimillion dollar industry that they uphold. That being said, the millionaires who coach them are not impressed with this policy and have been claiming that this lenient policy may not only cripple college football (which is farfetched) but that it may “destroy” the future of America (if America was going to be destroyed it’s going to happen now under President Trump, not due to some 20-year-old trying to transfer to another state school to play football).

Coaches have listed three reasons, each of which is futile, for their opposition to the new transfer policy:




1. Teaching our society to be “soft”




2. We need to think of their education




3. We need to think of the high school coaches and players




The “making our kids soft” argument has been protolyzed by numerous coaches to the media. It is an interesting kind of argument because it seems to be more of a ploy of a type of “argument” rather than a substantive argument. The “it’s teaching our society to be soft” phrase is the same type of argument that is used when people hear rebel rousing Trump fanatics cry out, “I hate all the political correctness!” These arguments suggest two items: The speaker is (1) expressing how he/she misses the past; (2) because something in the past, that is now being taken away, made their lives easier.




So, as an example, when a presumably white, middle age male cries out how he voted for Trump because “society these days is becoming too politically correct,” he really is wishing that society would return to a time when society wasn’t so “politically correct.” In other words, this person wants to return to a time when his culture (again, presumably a white, adult male) did not have to watch what he said as much – this is known as “white privilege.” To ask that Americans be more cognizant and recognize other Americans’ cultures isn’t to suggest that American society is becoming “too insecure.” it’s to suggest that Americans are becoming more intellectual, and also understanding that white privilege is wrong.




Likewise, when Penn State’s head football coach, James Franklin, asks, “[h]ow do you learn to overcome adversity and fight through battles and learn to compete? I worry about that for our sport; I worry about that for kids and our country. The path of least resistance very rarely is the answer. How do you have discipline and structure and tough conversations in your program if there’s always a Plan B, an outlet with no real repercussions?” Franklin asserts this under the same veil worn by those who cry out against the horrors of “political correctness.”

What James Franklin doesn’t want to disclose is that the lenient transfer policy takes some of his absolute control and transfers it to the players. Franklin attempts to assume the role of the paternal figure, thinking in the best interest of his free labor who, ironically, is the same free labor that yielded him with a six-year contract worth $5.8M per year. Franklin, outlandishly, goes so far as to say that this transfer policy will not only destroy his sport, but America as well. Franklin’s fear mongering projects his own fear that he can no longer be the complete autocratic ruler that his past predecessors were able to be in a college football locker-rooms. In other words, like the white man acting out against “political correctness” because it forces him to relinquish power and control, Franklin is acting out against the “transfer policy” because it forces him, as a coach, to have to change his attitude towards the free labor over which he enjoyed complete control prior.




One attitude that Franklin, as well as other NCAA football coaches, will need to amend is the fact that they routinely lie to high school recruits in an effort for the coach to get them into their program. As stated in the ESPN article, “[Players] have monitored recent recruiting trends, which include prospects playing early in their careers and coaches adding multiple quarterbacks in a single class.” Two arguments are illustrated here. The first is that more prospects are playing earlier in their careers, and the second being that coaches are adding multiple players of the same position in the same recruiting class.




The latter argument is important more so for positions in which only one is required on the field at a time – quarterback. Ohio State provides a great example of this issue. Tate Martell was the second-best quarterback in the 2017 college football recruiting and the 39th ranked best player in his class. To say the least, Martell was expecting to play in his college career at Ohio State. That would not occur. The reason being is because Justin Fields, who was the top quarterback in the 2018 recruiting class, has decided to transfer from Georgia to Ohio State. Tate Martell, realizing that he was no longer slated to be the Ohio State starting quarterback, decided to transfer to a program where he would see meaningful playing time. The argument goes that Martell should have “battled” Fields for the starting position because that was “how it was done back in the day.” However, “back in the day” also provided seniority to those who were upperclassmen. A freshman or sophomore starting at quarterback was unheard of unless the upperclassmen were injured. This has changed as many freshmen have routinely beaten out their upperclassmen competition. Look no further than the reigning 2019 National Champion, Clemson Tigers. They started the season with their senior quarterback, Kelly Bryant, who was replaced, not due to any bad play or team losses, but because he was simply outplayed by phenom freshman quarterback – Trevor Lawrence. Kelly has transferred to play quarterback at the University of Missouri.




The fact that “many [coaches] cite stories of how older players fought through adversity early in their careers, stayed with the program and became stars or major contributors” seems hollow. Tate Martell as a freshman was redshirted and sat behind J.T. Barrett. Then the following year Martell backed up Dwayne Haskins. Then, when in his redshirt junior year, Martell again saw his starting quarterback dream plummet when Ohio State coaches paraded sophomore Justin Fields around campus and introduced him during halftime of an OSU men’s basketball game. I don’t think OSU could have given Martell a better sign that if he stayed he wouldn’t see the field. In turn, this example proves the coaches’ argument that “players are becoming soft” is completely false. More importantly, players are learning to look out for themselves rather than abide by loyalty to a coach or a team, especially when that coach or team assumes no loyalty towards them.




The second argument coaches make is the “student-athlete” argument. The increase in transfers under the new NCAA Transfer Policy “greatly concerns some coaches and administrators who . . . say it not only hurts teams that players are leaving but decreases the chances of graduation for those transferring without sitting.” In the old transfer system, a player who transferred for no extreme reason was forced to sit out a season. This penalty seemed frivolous because it wasn’t exactly clear what the purpose behind the need for a player to sit out a year was for. That’s one reason, it seems, the NCAA has chosen to move forward with this more lenient transfer policy. More importantly, the players who are transferring are doing so because, like Tate Martell or Justin Fields, they know they are capable of starting. Unlike what most coaches claim, these top recruits didn’t come to college to gain an education, but because it is the only route to their true dream job – playing in the NFL. Juwan Johnson, a graduate transfer from Penn State stated, “a lot of the time, people transfer because they can’t play at the school that they’re at . . . I feel like people should be playing because you only have so many years to show what you got before trying to fulfill your dream in the NFL. . . sitting out a year is tough on anybody.” Juwan’s logic should come as no surprise to rational college football fans. College football players’ first priority is to play. Education comes somewhere further down the priority list.




Coaches who use the education argument should do more to make it more convincing. Too many athletes receive worthless degrees, but colleges and coaches can state that their program rests on its players receiving an adequate education. The coaches fail to state that the degrees most players receive will help them very little in getting them a job anywhere five feet away from the gridiron. In an article written by SBNation’s Kevin Trahan called, Athletes are Getting Degrees, but Does That Actually Mean Anything?, it finds that there is a, “[f]ocus on eligibility rather than education . . . [colleges] put [players] in easy majors – and things that aren’t even majors . . . These majors allow players to get easy degrees that give them little chance of finding a job consistent with their peers, many of whom had more time and academic prowess to spend on more challenging majors or will go to graduate school.” So, coaches who claim that the new transfer policy places players in harm of not finishing their education fail to grasp the greater question – are the players even receiving a meaningful education under the current formula? The answer seems to be an unequivocal “no.”




The last futile argument that coaches make is that the new transfer policy will hurt high school football players entering college. “Penn State’s Franklin said some high school coaches are becoming concerned about their top players competing with transfers for scholarship spots.” However, Franklin, and all coaches can only blame themselves for this fear. That is because if a coach doesn’t want his current quarterback to leave, he shouldn’t be trying to entice a high school protégé to come to his program. In addition, if a coach is doing this, he should make clear to the incoming high school player that he will be sitting behind the current starter and/or back up in line. If a coach doesn’t do this then there should be no surprise that there will be an increase in the amount of transfers, especially those that are in the same position in which Clemson’s former quarterback, Kelly Bryant, was placed in. Hence, if there are fewer transfers because coaches are being honest salesman to high schoolers, then high schoolers wouldn’t have to fear having to compete with transfers.






Frankly, coaches who are against the new transfer policy have the power to end this “apocalyptic death sentence” that has been cast upon college football. It’s very simple – coaches can stop permitting transfers to their team. In turn, players could try and put themselves out there to transfer but NCAA football coaches will refuse to offer them a spot on their team. In other words, the authoritarian millionaire college football coaches can still control the labor that makes them so rich. However, this would require each of these millionaires to collectively bind together and refuse to accept transfers. That would not happen though, because what is under each of these three arguments isn’t anything moral but is the very fact that college football coaches love nothing more than winning. Coaches love winning even more than having complete control of their program. Coaches only use the “players are getting soft” argument because they are afraid that they will lose talented players and incur more losses. Coaches only use the “education” excuse because they want to sell the appearance that they are about education over winning games, when they are not. Finally, coaches could care less about high school players feelings, so long as they keep winning.




College football coaches are ruthless liars that rage against even the smallest inclination that a player may receive even an ounce of power and the coach may lose an ounce of his. And that is because, “[t]he goal is to win, and to make winning look good in the process, regardless of the reality.” Coaches have the power to stop the “lenient” transfer policy, but their fear of losing prevents that. So, coaches will continue to lash out at players transferring, while continuing to fuel the need for transfers.