"It's a cut throat business", Billy Napier, other SEC coaches weigh in on transfer tampering
Free agency is alive and well in college football. Or at least, in a different form.
More than 3,000 FBS players (3,284) entered the transfer portal from August of 2022 through May of 2023, a six percent increase from last offseason, according to ESPN.com figures.
The continued flood of players entering the portal has raised questions about how certain player movement is taking place, and whether tampering was involved before transfer portal windows opened.
It’s against NCAA rules. But like any regulation in a competitive industry, some are willing to test the margins.
“This is a cut-throat business,” Florida football coach Billy Napier said. “It’s the most competitive, one of the most competitive dynamics that exists. There’s no doubt tampering’s real.”
Florida lost 26 players to the transfer portal during the offseason while gaining 13. The most significant losses for UF were two starters on the offensive line, Michael Tarquin and Ethan White, who ended up signing with USC last December. White, though, won’t play for the Trojans this year due to a career threatening injury.
“It puts an importance on the culture within your building, the experience that your player has,” Napier said. “All facets of the player experience are important. I think in the evaluation process, it becomes even more important. The kid – who is his circle of influence? What’s the family dynamic? There’s an evaluation in the initial part of the recruitment that becomes even more important.”
Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin used another term at SEC spring meetings – pre-portal – to describe how players are coveted by other teams. Kiffin mentioned his star running back at Ole Miss, Quinshon Judkins, as an example. Judkins rushed for 1,567 yards and 16 TDs, last season as a freshman. He stayed at Ole Miss.
“I would argue we probably had the most pre-portal player in America, our running back because he was only a freshman,” Kiffin said. “So hey, when you get him, you don’t just get him for one, you get him for two years.”
Added Georgia coach Kirby Smart: “Teams have people on their staff that go out and watch the opposing team on the field right now how they look, how they run. They’re surveying the field for the portal.”
Solutions to stop tampering
Opinions on how to stop tampering vary from coach to coach. Some see stricter fines and penalties, like those imposed by the NFL and Major League baseball, as a potential deterrent.
“If you get caught and it’s proven there should be some severe penalties,” Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher.
How severe? A reduction of scholarships, fines or a coach being suspended were possible penalties suggested.
“You’ve got to have major penalties like the NFL,” Kiffin said.
Another potential solution is making transfer windows shorter. The two windows for FBS for 2022-23, from Dec. 5-Jan. 18 and from May 1-15, combined for 60 days.
“Some of the behaviors that really raise questions about tampering and the use of NIL, those seem to happen later as the portal drags on, though not exclusively,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said. “The observation from our coaches is, ‘Can we reduce those windows?’ I think there’s a need to engage.”
Auburn football coach Hugh Freeze said he would like to see the NCAA turn back the clock and abolish the one-time transfer exemption without sitting out a year. Exemptions, Freeze said, should be allowed for coaching changes and graduate transfers.
“That eliminates tampering, people not coming to take players if they have to sit out unless it’s one of those two reasons,” Freeze said. “But I don’t think that will ever happen again. Outside of that I don’t really know how you stop some of the discussions that will take place. They happen a lot of different ways and I don’t know if it’s always the school that starts it. And so I think it’s going to be very difficult to eliminate that totally.”
The SEC set a rule during the spring transfer period not to allow intra-conference transferring. But there were several intra-conference transfers during the winter period. Georgia landed standout Missouri receiver Dominic Lovett, while Florida signed Alabama tackle Dameion George Jr. and Kentucky tackle Kiuyanta Goodwin to reinforce the offensive line.
As to whether to extend the intra-conference rule to both transfer periods, opinions are mixed.
“Depending on where your program is at, and your roster’s at, year to year that’s going to be a little bit different,” Napier said. “You may have an opinion in Year 1 that is completely different in Year 4, if that makes sense. I think the stability of your roster, the depth of your roster, obviously directly affects your opinion on that rule. I can see both sides.”
Should coaches turn each other in
Another solution would be for coaches to report one another to the NCAA or call them out publicly. Pittsburgh coach Pat Narduzzi raised a public claim of tampering when his best receiver, Belitnikoff Award winner Jordan Addison, transferred to USC before the start of the 2022 season.
“What’s come of that? That would be my question,” Napier said. “You know ultimately, I think, to each his own, right, I know what approach we’ve chose to take. We’re going to control what we can control at the University of Florida and that’s our player experience. That’s our evaluation process, our recruiting process to try to position our team to be in the best position.”
Arkansas coach Sam Pittman said coaches are fearful of blowing the whistle because of potential retribution.
“The business is all about if you make somebody mad, you cut that possibility of a job market off your resume,” Pittman said.
For now, coaches say the best strategy is to maintain open, honest communication lines with players.
“It’s a lot more energy now in terms of spending with our own roster and trying to maintain,” Smart said. “It’s not just the portal, it’s the combination of the portal, the NIL, everything going on.”
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Florida Gators football coach Billy Napier and others discuss tampering
