Despite being around for a while now, loyalty and the college football transfer portal continues to be a hot topic. At this point, the only thing lamer is Hot Topic in the early 2000s. Seriously though, is there anything worse than Boomers slamming their keyboards to post barely coherent rants on how student-athletes should be grateful to play for their school?
Yes, of course there is. We live in a golden age of stupidity where people will loudly dispute even the most obvious facts. But all this faux outrage over loyalty and the college football transfer portal is still dumb.
For starters, it ignores basic reality. Every other college kid in America is free to transfer for whatever reason they see fit. And by the way, students definitely do change schools and have been doing so for decades.
For some reason, I still vividly remember a conversation I had with a fellow student at my beloved University of Idaho before a morning class in the early 2010s. She revealed that she had transferred schools four times in three years. I had never met an individual who had switched universities so frequently. Despite this, you know what thought never crossed my mind.
That student wasn’t being loyal.
The college experience isn’t about loyalty. It’s about finding a place where you feel comfortable enough to get through some of the most formative years of your life. A home away from home. NCAA athletes are no different in that regard. They should be free to experience life in the best way they see fit.
More importantly, when you’re 19, 20, 21, you don’t really know what you want. Students cycle through partners, majors, living quarters and, yes, schools. Depriving someone of this personal freedom because they happen to play a sport is selfish and, well, bullshit.
Also, there is something comically ironic about folks whining over college football players transferring being the same ones who incessantly go on about how their freedoms are infringed upon—nothing like complaining about being oppressed while trying to oppress others.
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However, I reserve a special level of scorn for those who never attended college trying to tell those in school what to do. Not only do these people have no idea what it’s like to be a student-athlete, let alone attend university, but their reasoning is based solely on the success of a school they voluntarily chose to support.
Ok, that’s not entirely fair. Some also try to claim that the transfer portal has made college football less interesting because players don’t stay with the same team for four seasons. And if that’s your argument, let’s just slide all the way down that slippery slope. Ban freshmen from playing and start letting coaches run their players to near death during the preseason. If it was good enough for Bear Bryant, it’s good enough for today’s game.
Finally, why isn’t loyalty in college football a two-way street? Nick Saban wasn’t loyal to Jalen Hurts in the 2018 College Football Playoff National Championship. Lincoln Riley wasn’t loyal to Spencer Rattler in 2021. Every season, countless coaches preach family and togetherness to their players, only to leave them high and dry for new jobs.
Demanding NCAA student-athletes show loyalty in a sport where the concept does not exist is Nerf ball. It also ignores the fact that transferring is as much of the college experience as roommates eating your stuff, intramural refs sucking or syllabus day. Just because a student happens to play football shouldn’t deprive them of this freedom.
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