Portal giveth? Washington has come out ahead in transfer era
Is the transfer portal good for college football? It's been good for the Huskies.
Washington’s athletic director is making the rounds to advocate for a single transfer-portal window in the spring.
Pat Chun isn’t alone in his desire to eliminate the December window, but it’s noteworthy that he’s taken on something of a spokesperson role for the cause. Chun first talked to Yahoo!’s Ross Dellenger about it in mid-June, then made his case with local media following the approval of the House v. NCAA settlement. Earlier this week, he appeared on the Triple Option podcast with Urban Meyer, Mark Ingram II and Rob Stone to reinforce his belief in a single window that leaves college football’s postseason undisturbed.
The message is important enough to Chun that Washington linked to his podcast appearance on its official athletics Twitter account, and later shared a video clip of the interview.
“All this player movement that is happening in December and January — is it good for the game?” Chun said. “Is that a principle that’s important to us, as caretakers of this game? … Come December, come January, you want to be at your absolute best as a team. That’s the goal.”
UW coach Jedd Fisch has echoed Chun’s advocacy for a spring transfer window. While I can’t think of a single person who believes it’s ideal to conduct free agency during the postseason, a spring window presents its own challenges, particularly with regard to team building and preparation for the season. Coaches are used to having the majority of their roster in the building in January. Perhaps moving spring practices to the summer, a la NFL OTAs, would mitigate some of those concerns.
Setting the timing of it aside, I want to focus on the question posed by the Triple Option folks in their tweet about Chun’s appearance: “Is the transfer portal good for college football?”
What they really mean to ask, if you listen to the conversation, is whether the winter transfer portal is good for college football. But I’ve been thinking recently about the portal more broadly, and about how it’s changed the fortunes of so many programs for better and worse.
It’s been pretty good to Washington, hasn’t it?