Coach Deion Sanders, Colorado illuminate the pros and cons of wide-open transfer portal

BOULDER, Colo. – The world of college sports officially entered a new era last week when the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors approved a new rule that allows undergraduate athletes to transfer to new schools multiple times without penalty.

This means there’s now permanent wide-open free agency for players, who can change schools as they please, as long as they’re academically eligible.

It’s a big boon for college athletes. A record of more than 3,500 major college football players have been in the transfer portal in 2023-24, according to 247Sports. They now have more freedom to chase more playing time and financial opportunities where the grass seems greener.

But at what cost to college sports when these athletes have more freedom to leave teams than even those in professional sports? And what about the old notion that transferring multiple times hindered a student’s academic progress toward graduation?

“I’ve seen little discussion of this among coaches, athletic directors or NCAA officials in regards to the transfer portal,” said Richard Southall, professor at South Carolina and director of the College Sport Research Institute. “That’s because this is really about the oscillating migration patterns of employees, not about students‘ academic progress. “

Last December, the NCAA fought against this rule change in court, arguing that such a “perpetual and unchecked” free-agency model would be disruptive to athletes’ academic success. It wanted to preserve the previous rule of allowing an athlete to transfer only once without penalty.

In the end, a federal court injunction in effect since then forced the NCAA to make the move reluctantly − after several states sued the NCAA to make it happen. Those states argued that it wasn’t fair to restrict players from freely pursuing opportunities elsewhere, especially after 2021, when athletes finally were allowed to earn money from their names, images and likenesses.

And right now there might be no better example of the mixed feelings about this rule change than here at Colorado.

The turnover at Colorado  

There’s been so much transfer portal activity at Colorado that roster management became an issue, particularly at the running back position. On April 18, head football coach Deion Sanders praised his running back, Dylan Edwards, calling him a “tremendous asset” who needs to be better utilized.

This came one day after running back Alton McCaskill, a transfer from Houston, said he was leaving Colorado for his third school since 2022.

Then on April 22, Ohio State running back Dallan Hayden announced he was transferring into Boulder to compete with Edwards for playing time.

A day after that, Edwards jumped into the transfer portal to get out of Boulder, as did another Colorado running back, Sy’Veon Wilkerson, who had just transferred from Jackson State last year.

“We had one healthy running back for yesterday’s practice,” Colorado offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur said April 25.

Shurmur then added another running back a day later, when Miami (Ohio) running back Rashad Amos committed to transfer to Colorado, his third school since 2022. But he won’t arrive until later this year, so Colorado had to move a cornerback to running back for its annual spring game Saturday

Colorado AD blames the attorneys general

As of Sunday, two days before the spring transfer portal window closed, Colorado had gained at least 33 new incoming football transfers for 2024, not including one who is transferring out already after previously transferring in from Cincinnati in January. But the Buffaloes also are losing at least 31 scholarship players to the transfer portal from last year’s team, including at least 13 who transferred in last year from other four-year colleges as undergraduates.

“This portal window has been brutal so far,” said one Colorado social media commenter after McCaskill announced he was leaving.

Rick George, Colorado’s athletic director, then responded to that comment by blaming the attorneys general of the states that sued the NCAA, including Colorado’s.

“Thank the AG’s that filed the temporary restraining order,” George wrote on social media April 17.

The gallop to the transfer portal

This is the school where Sanders has flourished in the transfer portal, having upgraded the team roster with 47 scholarship transfers from other four-year colleges last year before the Buffaloes finished 4-8 in Sanders’ first season, up from 1-11 in 2022. In 2023, his transfer recruiting class ranked No. 1 in the nation, according to 247Sports.

But now with the rule change, the portal has gotten more volatile than before, making rosters harder to manage, even if the players leaving the team are mostly backup players, as Sanders has noted.

Sanders on Saturday called it a “gallop to the portal.”

“I just don’t want them to die along with − how many is in the portal?” Sanders asked. “Thirty-five hundred young men.”

He said he hopes they had a plan.

“That’s my problem with people who just jumped into the portal,” he said. “Just have a plan.”

Coaches generally don’t like this rule change because they now must brace for high annual turnover on their teams. Sanders has accepted it, however. He believes the transfer portal gives him a quicker path to success and downplayed his portal losses by asking, “What are we losing?’

His boss at Colorado also has been supportive of Sanders’ strategy but has expressed general concern about the academic effects of allowing unlimited transfer opportunities for athletes, as opposed to the previous rule of allowing a free one-time transfer.

“I think we’re forgetting about the fact that education is primary,” George told the Boulder Daily Camera in December, shortly after the attorneys general sued the NCAA to allow multiple transfers without penalty. CU said George wasn’t available for further comment.

There’s also the case of Sanders’ daughter, Shelomi, who recently announced she was transferring, too.

Deion Sanders’ daughter transfers

Shelomi Sanders was a non-scholarship player for the Colorado women’s basketball team this past season after transferring from Jackson State in the middle of the academic year last year. She had followed her father from Jackson State to Boulder but only played 11 minutes all season in 2023-24.

She wanted more, so she entered the transfer portal for a better opportunity somewhere else. She landed at Alabama A&M, her third school since 2022, when she was just a freshman.

Her father hasn’t said much at all publicly about her decision but was known to love having his kids around him on campus. By contrast, his ex-wife has applauded her daughter’s decision on social media.

“We’re hitting the road, y’all,” Pilar Sanders, Shelomi’s mom, said on TikTok. “We love Boulder, Colorado, and thank you. But you gotta put you first baby. Let’s go.”

Shelomi Sanders’ decision illustrates the effect of the rule change, which has been in effect since a court order in December. Before the change, Shelomi Sanders would not have been able to leave Colorado so easily after already transferring once – from Jackson State.

How the rule change helped Shelomi Sanders

Under the previous rule, Shelomi Sanders would have been required to sit out a year of competition at her new school or ask for a waiver from this penalty.

This would have deterred her from leaving the school where her father coaches instead of seeking better opportunities somewhere else, where she might get more playing time and money from sponsors. Even though she didn’t play much this past season, her Instagram account has more than 470,000 followers, and she has used it to earn sponsorship money from companies such as Marriott Bonvoy and Meta Quest.

The NCAA’s previous transfer eligibility rule impaired “college athletes’ ability to take advantage of current and future opportunities derived from their name, image, and likeness (NIL),” said the federal lawsuit filed against the NCAA last year by the state attorneys general.

More harm than good?

This is a liberating time for college athletes after previously being denied freedoms afforded to regular students. Many believe it’s long overdue, though some wonder if allowing unlimited transfers does them more harm than good.

The NCAA allowed NIL money for athletes for the first time in 2021, the same year it allowed players to transfer to a new school one time without penalty. Before that, NCAA athletes were tied to the school they signed with and were required to sit out for an “academic year of residence” even if they were transferring for the first time.

Now the rule change allows players to freely pursue better NIL deals and more playing time somewhere else. But many will find that the grass isn’t greener at their next destination.

By comparison, regular students don’t exactly wrestle with annual temptations to pursue more playing time somewhere else that might not even materialize.

“We’ve got to find a way to put some parameters around this, because I don’t think this level of freedom serves the players in a way that we need to serve them,” former Colorado and NFL linebacker Chad Brown told USA TODAY Sports. “Because there is something to be said for perseverance. There is something to be said for battling your way through a difficult situation, and if we just allow these kids to pick up and leave whenever they want, that’s not a service to these kids.”

As an example, Brown noted he redshirted at Colorado as a freshman before moving on to become an All-American and All-Pro player. Not being able to play right away didn’t discourage him, he said. “I just saw it as an opportunity to get better, to get stronger, to understand the scheme.”

And what about those degrees?

Even if players love the change, it’s arguably not good for them in general if they want to earn a degree, which is supposed to be the goal of college. That’s because it’s harder to make progress toward a degree if you’re starting over at a new school two or three times while many of the academic credits you earned at previous schools also are rejected by your new school. That happens routinely, at least for non-athletes, because each school has different standards and requirements.

For example, two non-athlete students at Colorado told USA TODAY Sports last week they about lost a semester’s worth of credits after transferring in from other Division I universities.

“It has been well-researched that transfers in the general student body many times lose course credits when transferring, which impedes their progress toward a degree,” Southall said.

The NCAA cited similar research when it fought the rule change in December, saying that it “defies common sense to imagine that students who transfer three or four times are somehow in a better position to attain their degree or succeed academically.”

Because graduation was supposed to be a goal, it’s also why the NCAA previously allowed graduate students to transfer freely starting in 2011.

'Schools will do backflips'

With undergraduates now transferring more freely than ever, pressure is expected to build on other NCAA rules that still apply to incoming transfer players. Those rules require athletes to make progress toward their degrees each year with a minimum number of credit hours – a requirement that gets trickier with transfers because schools often don’t accept all credit hours from a student’s previous school.

If players don't have enough credits accepted at their new school, they won’t be eligible to play right away. It’s one reason NCAA members wanted transfers to sit out a year of competition first after transferring. It was called an “academic year of residence” – to help incoming transfer players get up to speed academically at their new schools.

How will that change with no “academic year of residence” required?

“Schools will do backflips to figure out a way to maximize (the acceptance of) credit transfers,” predicts B. David Ridpath, a sports business professor at Ohio University and longtime member of The Drake Group, which pushes for reform in college sports. “What that does is often push athletes into certain majors or clusters them in eligibility-friendly majors. Overall, that is not good for academic efficacy in any scenario, but that has never been the goal of college sports.”

Colorado had an answer for this

Colorado anticipated a need to adjust to these transfer issues shortly before Sanders was hired in December 2022. That’s when the university announced a new policy that allowed a more generous acceptance of transfer credits from players’ previous schools – a policy that was mostly used by the football team and helped keep those incoming transfers eligible to play right away.

In the meantime, members of the NCAA Division I Council said in a recent news release that they remain committed to the academic success of players who transfer.

“Anyone who decides to recruit a student who already has transferred one or more times must make a commitment to the academic success of that student and ensure the student-athlete has a complete understanding of the academic impact of transferring to the certifying school,” the news release said. “Members will continue to study the impact of the policy with special emphasis on the academic success of all student-athletes.”

Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com