Michigan, Michigan State football among teams facing great unknown as transfer portal opens

Mike Locksley doesn’t bemoan the current state of college football. Instead, he has come to accept it, and yes, maybe even embrace it. Sure, it is chaotic, unpredictable, messy and a bit crazy. But that’s life in this new age, and Locksley is determined to manage it the best he can.

“We’ve just got to stay creative and figure out solutions,” Locksley, Maryland's head coach, told the Free Press in early April.

Locksley is not going to rest until he does. Perseverance is deep in his core. It helped him become a career survivalist, who against all odds, rebounded from a calamitous 2-26 tenure at New Mexico to build a winning team at a lower-tier Big Ten school over the past five seasons.

This past winter, the Terrapins earned their third consecutive bowl victory, marking the first time that has ever happened in their 131-year existence. They also gave Michigan football one of its toughest tests during the Wolverines’ undefeated run to a national championship.

To get Maryland to a point where it could compete with the sport’s established powers required a grand vision, a methodical process and patience above all. But Locksley acknowledges he no longer has the luxury of time he once did. His world, the one he inhabits with the rest of his coaching peers, has sped up and become increasingly volatile, much like the planets in the outer reaches of our solar system.

“Everything is year-to-year,” said Locksley. “The team you construct can and will sometimes look very different than the one you had before.”

It could even change dramatically within the brief period between the final spring practice and the start of preseason camp during the dogdays of summer. A pair of recent court rulings have the potential to sow massive upheaval and spawn rapid roster turnover within every program before the end of this month.

One of those judgments forced the NCAA to remove the eligibility restrictions on student-athletes who switch schools multiple times. The other blocked the collegiate governing body from punishing players for negotiating name, image and likeness (NIL) deals with booster groups as they are being recruited. With those guardrails lifted in a sport where the old rules increasingly don’t apply, people have come to view Tuesday as a doomsday of sorts, the beginning of a reckoning that will coincide with the opening of a two-week transfer portal window.

“I’m not being a prophet here and saying there’s going to be seismic movements,” said Craig Bohl, the new executive director of the American Football Coaches Association. “But it’s probably going to be more than what we’d anticipate. … I’ve coached 42 years, I was a head coach 21 years, and I cannot recall a time when there’s a lack of clarity, there’s angst, there are question marks, where everybody’s looking, saying, ‘OK, what’s the next turn gonna unfold?' I have seen more uneasiness from my colleagues than I ever have.”

The concern Bohl describes can be detected in the voice of one Midwest Power Four head coach who spoke to the Free Press on the condition of anonymity. With a hint of exasperation, he said, “Literally, you have no idea until August what type of team you have or who’s going to be on your team. You can be deep one day, then not deep the next. I mean, everybody has the same problems.”

Climate change

The climate of uncertainty can be felt at spring practice, which has long been viewed as a pivotal period in a college program’s life cycle, when the depth chart begins to be organized, schemes are tweaked to match the strengths of the talent available and a foundation for the upcoming season is laid.

“Where guys earn their spurs and you’re putting your elements in on the offense, defense and kicking game, where you’re evaluating personnel and then come out of it, saying, ‘This is the squad we have,’” said Bohl, who hung up his whistle in December after leading Wyoming the past 10 years.

“You want to know who’s all there.”

But these days, in college football’s ever-shifting landscape, nothing is set in stone. The instability has created a difficult environment for Michigan’s Sherrone Moore and Michigan State’s Jonathan Smith, two newly appointed coaches eager to establish themselves in a deeper, mightier conference that now has 18 teams.

In East Lansing, Smith is charged with reviving the Spartans after they slogged to a 4-8 record last fall following the scandal-ridden dismissal of his predecessor, Mel Tucker. It’s a daunting undertaking, which calls for new systems to be installed and returning players to be remolded, with the looming possibility of defections in the coming weeks threatening to impede any progress made over the past month.

“It’s a lot more challenging,” MSU offensive line coach Jim Michalczik acknowledged. “But I’d like to think the kids are going to buy into our program, the way we do it and how we do it.”

MORE MSU: MSU's Pro Day offers reminder of Mel Tucker's failed mission and Jonathan Smith's big task

Sixty-five miles away in Ann Arbor, Moore is trying to invite the same commitment as he deals with his own complications. He must reconfigure an offense that lost 10 starters and preserve a top-ranked defense that features a star-studded core rumored to have been coveted by some of the Wolverines’ top competitors this offseason. Cornerback Will Johnson, one of U-M’s most highly regarded players, said it was “easy to get tempted” by potential opportunities elsewhere.

“Especially when you hear all the numbers and all the things like that,” he explained.

“Sometimes you gotta be a man and business is business. But we all want to stay together, definitely,” said Kenneth Grant, the junior defensive tackle who burst on the scene last fall.

Whether that happens, though, remains to be seen in this age with few guarantees.

Around this time last year, more than 1,000 players at the FBS and FCS levels entered the portal. But Moore and his assistants are banking that the impressive solidarity within Michigan’s ranks, which was so evident during its climb toward the summit of college football, will keep the guts of the team intact. Since Moore’s predecessor, Jim Harbaugh, bolted for the Los Angeles Chargers in late January and triggered a major staff reorganization, only four lettermen have entered the portal. The strong fellowship within the locker room has curbed a talent-draining exodus, according to players. So too has NIL support, which has been allocated toward the retention of its most prominent contributors.

READ MORE: Michigan football's remade offense playing catch-up to mighty defense: 'A lot of new players'

'Gasoline on the fire'

Still, a sense of disquiet remains, percolating at campuses all over the country. Within Bohl’s constituency, there is growing frustration about rampant tampering that has become more pervasive in this age of unfettered transfer movement. Bohl said it has become “a real point of contention” and that it is “throwing some gasoline on the fire.”

No program seems immune to it either.

Locksley fears his Maryland roster could be “eaten from both ends of the football hierarchy,” by the big sharks angling for the Terps’ best players, and the bottom-feeding minnows who crave their reserves. The losses he has already sustained have created imbalances between the position groups, forcing him to adjust how he conducts practices in recent weeks. It’s not ideal, he noted.

“But we’ll work smart,” he said.

Locksley has had to rethink his approach, focusing more on the development of intangible aspects like culture and chemistry to inculcate loyalty instead of just concentrating on football-specific ventures designed to help his team win on game days. The Midwest Power Four coach also has adapted his methods, reducing the amount of contact in spring practice to preserve the health of his most valuable players while modeling the training sessions after the NFL’s organized team activities. The rationale is based on the assumption he may not have enough NIL money available to secure an adequate replacement for a key starter if he gets injured.

“You can’t do it like you used to, in my opinion,” he told the Free Press on background. “I don’t think there’s enough depth on rosters and then as we get closer and the portal starts opening, more and more people will hop in. … You’re playing the waiting game. Most of us have 90% of what the team is going to look like. But that 10% can be 10 of your best players. It can be 10 depth players. I think that is the unknown.”

The mystery of it all is maddening, leaving everyone in the college football ecosystem on edge.

“What is the end result?” Locksley asked with a hint of bewilderment. “Nobody knows how this thing looks at the end yet.”

But Locksley plans to stay nimble and adjust until there is a clear view and a semblance of order in a sport manipulated by the invisible hand of its NIL-driven portal marketplace. He said it has become his duty to “navigate the storm.”

As Locksley explained, “I’m almost killing myself to figure out how to find a solution.”

Nothing less would be expected from a man who has shown in the past he has what it takes to survive.

Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him @RainerSabin.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan, MSU and rest of college football bracing for great unknown