The Transfer Portal And Its Effects On College Athletes

Over the last couple of years, the transfer portal has been a very controversial topic, whether or not it has changed college athletics. The transfer portal is a database that allows college athletes to communicate with coaches and transfer to a new school without punishment. Many people say that the transfer portal is a great opportunity for collegiate athletes to find a perfect home for themselves. On the other hand, others believe that college sports have changed because of the chaos that it has caused. A lot of athletes have started to rely heavily on the portal and it has become a big factor with playing time being an issue. The transfer portal has been very beneficial for many athletes across the world, but it has also been a disappointment

If players want to play and not sit on the bench, going into the portal is a good way for this to happen. It allows athletes to show who they are and the potential that they can have. “The 69 programs (including Notre Dame) that will be playing in Power 5 conferences this season lost an average of 18.5 scholarship players to the portal this offseason” (Olson). As seen above, a lot of the programs and conferences that have been heavily impacted by the portal are bigger schools. The bigger the schools are, the more athletes there are, and the more likely those players are to enter the portal. Some coaches like to believe that the transfer portal is not a good thing for college sports. It does not allow them to go through struggle and failure. Some kids are not willing to put in the work in the practice and get nothing out of it by not playing on the field or the court. “So says Michigan State men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo, who thinks the portal makes it hard to learn an important life lesson: success takes struggle” (Yaeger). Tom Izzo believes that it is hard for athletes to learn the lesson of