The transfer portal is necessary for many reasons. College coaches can up and leave at the end of any season and head off to another job without sitting out a year so players should have the same rights. But for college football programs, its buyer beware in the portal.
Dabo Swinney doesn’t like the portal. He says the right things now but when it was introduced he was clearly not a fan. Dabo believes in culture and building from within. He’s a loyal guy, often to his detriment. But Dabo also knows that a unified locker room is key to success.
We are beginning to see the fallout of the portal. Deion Sanders feels the portal is his No. 1 way to instant success. That led to a 4-8 season and last place in the PAC 12. However, Colorado is off to a 3-1 start this year so it remains to be seen if he can prove his model. If things start to go south, the locker room will collapse. But maybe it will all work out?
Mel Tucker was portal reliant and his Kenneth Walker led team surprised everyone going 11-2. However, the next season they were 5-7 before Tucker imploded and ruined his career. Mike Norvell was portal reliant but a strong portal group led to 13-0 last season before being snubbed for the playoff. The result? Most of the portal players sat out the bowl game and they lost 63-3 to Georgia. And this year a portal reliant program is off to an embarrassing 1-3 start without most of those one-and-done portal players.
The point of all this? Portal players don’t grow up in the locker room. They aren’t immersed in the culture for years. And they are often in it for themselves, mercenaries if you will.
More Sports News
Matthew Sluka is a portal player. Whether UNLV delivered on their promises or he asked for an additional bag, he’s not a UNLV guy and that’s clear. He’s in it for himself. And many fans will defend that. “If your company agrees to pay you a certain amount and didn’t, you’d quit too.” And that’s correct. Loyalty goes as far as a paycheck in the business world. But in the locker room it’s supposed to be about football, teammates and loyalty to each other. And Sluka, like some other transfers, is loyal to the bag. We are in a business world on both sides in college football so coaches have to be very smart and determine which portal players they can trust. And that’s tricky.
Maybe Dabo was right.
