Right to transfer: Why it’s a game changer for college athletes

Alonzo Colvin goes by “Ace,” a family nickname. He hopes to work in film after college, eventually making his way up to a director’s seat. But first, he’s attempting to achieve his goal of becoming a professional football player. 

Compared with past generations of student-athletes, Mr. Colvin has more potential avenues he can take. He’s currently an outgoing first-year player at ASA College’s junior college football program in Miami. But in hopes of additional playing time – and game film to present to programs once his junior college career concludes – he intends to transfer to Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls, Iowa.   

Mr. Colvin is able to explore new options without penalty through a new rule on one-time transfers approved in April by the NCAA, college athletics’ governing body. The rule allows all student-athletes one opportunity to transfer colleges without losing a season of eligibility or sitting out an entire year. (Student-athletes have four years of eligibility, plus a redshirt practice season.)

“We’re more than just athletes. We’re not robots,” Mr. Colvin says. “You get a full scholarship, but there’s more to it.” 

His experience, modest as it may sound, is a sign of tectonic shifts underway in college athletics. Changes by the NCAA in recent years also include the 2018 launch of a player database called the “transfer portal” and last year’s approval of “name, image, likeness” (NIL) profit opportunities for players.

The result is an era of heightened leverage for players in football, basketball, and beyond. No longer are athletes forced to grin and bear it through administrative turmoil, coaching turnover, or lack of playing time. They can opt to leave – mirroring the free agency concept in professional sports – although with some personal risk if no other program will take them. 

“I think what this has done is allowed almost a reset of the market, so to speak, where, for whatever reason, if the player is not happy with their experience, they have an opportunity to see if there are other opportunities,” says Brian Spilbeler, the chief operating officer at Tracking Football, an NCAA-approved scouting service that partners with collegiate all-star games. 

The changes come, he notes, as fans have increasingly clued in to the incongruence between the model of amateurism and the fact that student-athletes are part of a growing multibillion-dollar industry. For some fans, it’s become hard to differentiate between the NCAA and professional leagues. 

“But obviously, there’s a big difference, which is that these are student-athletes,” Mr. Spilbeler says. “You’re starting to see this shift, where athletes want more rights, they want more opportunity, and they want to be treated more as an employee – a professional – as opposed to a student-athlete. There’s pros and cons to that. We’re going through a pretty steep learning curve.” 

The disruption is visible in the data: More than 3,000 players across the NCAA’s three divisions have entered the NCAA transfer portal so far – and more than 1,200 are Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) scholarship recipients, according to numbers released by the scouting service Rivals. Half of those FBS scholarship athletes haven’t found a new home, Rivals says. 

With rules change, a shift in culture too

Colleges and players alike are just starting to navigate the ensuing upheaval.

Perhaps most notably, the transfer opportunities are altering the culture of college sports – forcing coaches and administrators to better monitor the experience their programs offer athletes. 

There was a time when coaches would recruit players and, colloquially speaking, “deprogram” them. It’s a means of molding players into part of a team’s culture, and a reminder that their days of dominating the sport in high school are over. But with players’ newfound leverage, coaches have found themselves reinventing the recruiting process on the fly as they “continuously recruit their own players,” says Matt Brown, a sports reporter whose newsletter Extra Points explores the college part of college sports. 

“It’s changed how coaches coach, it’s changed how schools recruit, and it’s changed how athletes approach their own recruitment,” he says.  

The era in which college coaches could throw their weight around in dictatorial fashion are over. Coaches must find a way to continue resonating with players on a personal level beyond the high school recruiting process, or risk losing them. That might consist of checking on a player’s attitude and their experience so far in college sports, or asking about their personal goals or their mental health. 

Not everything is going smoothly as the changes take root.

Some coaches and onlookers alike complain of “tampering” as the new rules become an opportunity for some teams to lure players away from others. Similarly, some programs may find it so easy to harvest talent through the transfer portal that they pay less attention to nurturing new players who are fresh out of high school.

“There’s unintended consequences to all this,” Mr. Brown says of the portal and NIL. “There’s some positives, and there’s some negatives.” 

And cultural change in locker rooms doesn’t come easily. Mr. Brown notes the University of Hawaii as an example, where a slew of star players opted to enter the NCAA transfer portal due to what former players say was a verbally abusive, toxic atmosphere. On Jan. 7, former Hawaii Rainbow Warrior players and several parents testified to a state Senate hearing about Todd Graham’s tumultuous tenure as head coach. 

A week later Mr. Graham resigned on his own accord. 

Whatever the challenges, however, the new NCAA environment promises to make student-athletes better respected. Mr. Brown calls the shifts “a very big win for athletes’ rights, for athlete flexibility.”

Still not an easy path for athletes 

Mr. Colvin is an underdog compared with star Division I players. That’s why he’s taken his future into his own hands by deciding to transfer to a new school. 

The benefits that draw him to college sports come with counterweights, Mr. Colvin admits. His experience as a college student won’t mirror those of his peers. Frequent travel will be required, meaning he’ll have to sit out on some classes that he might have preferred to enroll in. He likely won’t have the time to pursue an internship, or study abroad, or join a fraternity. 

“The NCAA likes to tell everyone that they’re probably going to go pro in something other than sports, and your compensation for playing a sport is a college education,” Mr. Brown says. “You get this degree, but there’s a difference between a college degree and a college education.” 

Still, the horizons for college athletes are widening, Mr. Colvin says.

He hopes to have an NIL deal done soon but doesn’t share details. To land a deal that makes a difference for him and his family, he must build a following. Mr. Colvin had a brush with fame as a high school student, when a documentary series was made about his team at a low-income Baltimore high school. Former NFL star and talk show host Michael Strahan was among the series’ producers. Mr. Colvin and one of his teammates were featured on “Good Morning America” to discuss the series last year. 

The gains so far for student-athletes are incremental and, to many like Mr. Colvin, incomplete. 

He mentions a cousin, who’s also playing college football. His cousin couldn’t afford to pay his phone bill a few months back, and he doesn’t own a vehicle. When a family emergency happened at home last year, his cousin felt helpless. 

“There’s still so many kids who are struggling outside of football. Our mental health, people don’t take that seriously,” Mr. Colvin says. “They only really care about us on the football field.” 

People like Mr. Spilbeler say they’re working to create a better future for all those involved in college sports. How it will play out is uncertain, but the motion is already set in place for college athletics’ continued evolution. 

“Right now, we’re in the midst of a pendulum swing, and there’s a lot of factors playing out simultaneously,” Mr. Spilbeler says. “It’s hard to chart exactly where all this is going to go. … We’re in the mix of trying to sort it all out right now.”