Former Notre Dame QB Brady Quinn: Transfer portal has college football ‘at an inflection point’
As we approached the transfer portal deadline on May 1 (entries could come out through May 3, but that’s another story), the top issue facing college football was a rumor that Pittsburgh wide receiver and Biletnikoff Award winner Jordan Addison was considering entering the transfer portal and USC was a top destination on his list.
Because a supposed name, image and likeness deal is at the center of the potential issue, the “wild west” characterization is back at the top of the college football discourse.
Former Notre Dame quarterback and current talking head Brady Quinn sounded off on the topic on Monday on “2 Pros and a Cup of Joe,” naming another culprit as the root of the issue.
“Here’s the problem with college football, and I do think we’re at an inflection point where if someone doesn’t step in and do something, we’re going to start to tarnish the sport and what it looks like,” Quinn said. “If you think about it, not that the NCAA makes a ton of money from college football — but all of these conferences and universities do, and they’ve been able to profit off of essentially free labor.
“But NIL’s not what has created what’s happening right now in college football. If you think that’s the case, you’re dead wrong. It’s not. It’s the transfer portal, and it’s how we’re allowing these kids, or young men, to be able to get out of any commitment whatsoever.”
In April 2021, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors ratified the one-time transfer rule, allowing all Division I athletes to make one move without a waiver. As a result, record-breaking numbers of college athletes entered the portal. Quinn views that as an issue and provided a solution on Monday.
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“It is as simple as saying this: let’s provide a one-month window where these young men have the opportunity to transfer if they want, and they get one freebie just like now,” Quinn said. “Instead, you’ve got this yearlong ability for any kid at any point to jump onto a roster and go ‘I don’t like it here’ or someone calls up, let’s just say a coach from another team or a player from another team, and says, ‘Hey, we’d love to have you here.’
“Then they can sell you on ‘Oh we’ll have this NIL deal for you here.’ OK, great. But even if that NIL deal was there, if you shut off the ability of the student-athlete to just up and leave at any point in time during the season or throughout the year, he’s going to at least commit for a year until that next window opens up. So there is actually some sort of sense of commitment by that player at least for that year.”
Quinn made clear that if USC was tampering in the Addison situation, they were not the first ones to do it. It’s been happening across college football since the transfer portal was created in 2018. In 2022, it’s just under the guise of the newest toy: NIL.
“Now they’re using NIL money, which is above board, to do it,” Quinn said. “The only problem with that is, that’s considered inducement and there’s no one right now cracking down on any sort of ‘inducement.'”
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Quinn is not the first to speak out against the direction in which college sports are supposedly headed. Numerous former players and athletic administrators have derided the process as it currently stands. Where exactly is it going? That’s anyone’s guess.
