New NCAA President says the transfer portal needs work

NCAA president Charlie Baker recently addressed the growing issue of the transfer portal in athletics. (Photo: Josh Morgan / USATODAY)

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Tue Jun 20 07:00:19 GMT-04:00 2023

NCAA President Charlie Baker says the transfer portal needs work, but also says the high number of student-athletes in the portal stems from restrictions put on college visits during COVID.

Charlie Baker assumed the duties as the NCAA's sixth president on March 1, 2023. He was hired for the position on Dec. 15, 2022, as he neared the conclusion of his term as the 72nd governor of Massachusetts.

Since then, Baker has had to address a plethora of issues that plague college sports governing body, and spoke on the transfer portal during the College World Series Monday game between Stanford and Tennessee.

Baker said athletes were forced to choose a school after virtual visits.

“Look, I think the portal – there’s a couple things about the portal we need to remember,” Baker said. “One is we have a lot of student-athletes going into the portal who have a fifth and sixth year of eligibility. We also have the classes of ’24 and ’25 didn’t actually get to visit the school they had to choose. If you look at the numbers of students period at colleges who’ve been transferring for the past few years, the numbers are really high.

“The student-athlete numbers are actually lower as a percent of their total part of the population. But there’s a lot of movement that I think’s driven by the fact you had two years where most kids didn’t get a chance to visit a school before they had to choose where to go, which is complicated.”

Following the 2022 season, only 54% of football players in the portal reported being signed by another school. Baker said that many of those athletes chased NIL deals at other schools, and when those deals didn’t work out were left without a home.

“I do think for student-athletes, this lack of any available real information about what’s going on other than the hearsay and the mythology and the misinformation that somebody feeds you is a problem,” Baker said. “In D1 last year, almost half the kids that went into the portal didn’t land anywhere. And I’m convinced that they were pulled into it by somebody who was just collecting names and trying to see if they could land them somewhere.

“If you could validate or verify when somebody says ‘you’re with X or I’ve done Y,’ I think that would make it a lot easier for families and student-athletes to make good decisions instead of what, for a lot of kids, turned out to be bad ones. So, yeah, the portal needs work, but I think there’s a lot of noise in it at the moment that’s due to COVID.”