What if you could press the reset button on your life?

Start over, take it back to zero, grant yourself a mulligan and take another swing at things.

You’d be tempted, wouldn’t you? We all would.

Fresh starts are irresistible. When you start over, anything is possible, and it seems like it all might be good. New places, new faces, new bosses – all of it has an easygoing appeal, especially when you’re tired of the places and faces and bosses you already know. If things aren’t working, starting over with a new outlook and a new homebase seems like a survival tactic. And if things are working – who knows – maybe they can work even better somewhere else.

If all the rest of us are so easily mesmerized by the fresh start, why would we expect anything differently of college students?

When I wrote about the swift rise of the NCAA Transfer Portal in this space back in January, I was cautiously optimistic about the effects it might have on college athletics. Yes, it would radically change things (Transfer rule change is here, and it’s game-changing), and yes, it would kickstart a world-altering transformation of the games we love, but for an institution as hidebound and tradition obsessed as the NCAA, change might not be the worst thing that ever happened, I believed.

I still believe this, still believe in the Portal’s potential for breathing new life into college sports. I still believe athletes deserve to play wherever they want to play, and to do it now rather than later. I still believe that savvy coaches will learn to exploit the Portal to rapidly improve their programs, and that those coaches need not fear its power if they can learn to harness it instead.

But there can now be no doubt that these changes are happening so rapidly and so quickly that it can be difficult for even the most plugged-in fan to keep up. The information overload is real, and it is staggering.

And I should know.

I was already struggling so hard to stay abreast of recruiting and practice updates and injury reports and press conferences that it was getting difficult for me to actually pay attention to the games themselves.

Now I need to keep track of the Transfer Portal.

Well, buckle up. A fan’s work never ends.

Knowledge is Power

Before we go a step further, we must pause for some good news: The fine folks at Gamecock Central have risen to the occasion to help even the most information-saturated fan find some meaning and clarity in all these dizzying developments.

We must thank heaven for this. Because I was starting to get lost, adrift on an open sea of news and notes.

Thanks to the Portal, there now seems to be a constant stream of comings and goings affecting almost every South Carolina sports team. Just this week, Shane Beamer’s football team bid adieu to more athletes seeking that elusive fresh start (Sam Reynolds latest to enter transfer portal), while the men’s basketball team continues to say both hail and farewell to transferring players (South Carolina basketball: Portal roundup).

Just as when you allow yourself to get worked up over every twist and turn in recruiting, following the Portal is an occasionally unsatisfying – and sometimes even unsettling – experience.

There’s that blessed rush of adrenaline when a veteran player takes a look at the national landscape, digests all of the options and opportunities available to them, and then comes to the wise conclusion that the University of South Carolina is where they’d rather be as opposed to wherever they are now (like here Nate Adkins commits to USC and here USC getting ‘confident player’ in Meechie Johnson).

But the Portal deletes players from South Carolina rosters, too.

Someone’s always looking for more playing time, or wants an opportunity to get closer to home, or needs the guidance of a different coaching staff.

And just as I do during recruiting season when a high school kid decides to cast his lot with Georgia or LSU or Auburn instead of South Carolina, I find myself agonizing over a simple question:

Why doesn’t this person want to attend the same college I attended?

Have I mentioned that I’m in middle-age and am far too old to be fretting about where a 19-year-old chooses to get an education? Perhaps I should skip that part.

Trust the Process…or Else

Whether we can stand to do so or not, we must trust the Portal.

We must place ourselves into its hands and submit to its authority. Work with it, not against it. Submit to, and do not resist, the Portal’s power.

Yes, it’s oddly depressing to read about players excitedly transferring elsewhere. Even if the transferring athletes weren’t playing much, or playing at all, or were maybe even encouraged to look around by scholarship-hungry coaches, it still stings a fan’s heart every time the Portal claims another victim.

What troubles us about such stories is the disturbing reality that these athletes aren’t strangers to our school’s charms. No, they have arrived in Columbia, spent time walking the Horseshoe, worn garnet and black, run out under the lights at Williams-Brice or Colonial Life, heard “2001” blaring in praise of them, and have still made this decision: “I’d like to go somewhere else.”

For those of us who love South Carolina the way we love South Carolina, such decisions seem inexplicable (even if they are in the player’s own best interests).

We always assume that this place will stick into the hearts of everyone who passes through it, just as it has into ours.

But sometimes it’s time for a fresh start, no matter where you find yourself.

That will never change. And it’s nothing to fear.

That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

Tell me your thoughts on the Transfer Portal and what it means for college sports by writing me at [email protected].

Discuss South Carolina football and the transfer portal on The Insiders Forum!