College football portal confidential: How tampering, NIL deals and portal chaos happen
What is the transfer portal really like in the NIL age? We surveyed coaches, players, agents, NIL collectives and more to find out.
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Entering the portal
The second a player’s name appears in the transfer portal, it’s like a high school recruitment all over again, only in a tighter time frame and with a history of college production to point to. Plus, there are financial conversations to be had.Agent 3: There are absolutely kids going into the portal that don’t want to go into the portal, but the parents orchestrate it. And a big thing now is (collectives giving) a separate NIL stipend for parents to go to the games. Because that gets expensive. You can get a situation where the player gets a certain amount of money, but the parents take a big chunk out of it, so now it’s a big thing for the parents to get a separate NIL stipend. And that’s a big thing for the kids, because the parents are a big influencer.
Agent 1: I had a defensive line coach reach out to me over winter break and he told me, “These are the positions I need to fill; send me the list of your guys who are willing to enter the portal.” I gave him a list. It was as simple as that.
Agent 2: There are other programs that just ask the player directly in warm-ups.
Player 2: There was a school that, after we played them, one of their coaches came up and talked to me. “Hey, I know it was a bad deal here. I’m not really allowed to say much, but for what it’s worth, you have really big fans over here and I want you to know that. I know you’re entering the portal soon.” I was like, “OK, cool.”
Player 3: As soon as I entered the portal, my DMs started blowing up that night and it just kept going from there. It was definitely a cool experience. Coming out of high school, I didn’t get that kind of attention. It was cool to have these two very different recruiting experiences, going from being this guy who was really under the radar that no one knew about to being seen as a top guy in the portal.
Player 4: If I had to give a rough estimate, it’d be probably 20 to 25 schools.
Player 5: A LOT. Lots. Like maybe 60 or 70.
Player 1: At least 50. Probably more. The schools that I had multiple calls with and tried to maintain a relationship for at least a week or so were probably between 25 and 30.
How the deal is done
NIL collective CEO 1: We’re in direct contact with our coaches about roster management daily. It’s three conversations — high school recruiting, which is the smallest piece, it’s your current roster, and it’s portal recruiting. And we’re talking to our coaching staff daily, weekly, about all three buckets. It was a needed change. Now that everything’s kind of out in the open, the athletes now have full visibility of what each particular school is offering, and we can communicate with our coaches now, which helps us manage budgets and rosters.NIL collective CEO 2: That wall of separation that was supposed to exist between collectives and student-athletes was enjoined by that district court decision.
NIL collective CEO 3: I’m told to make contact once there’s an official visit set up, and usually I’m making contact with a parent or an agent. It’s been very agent-heavy lately, especially during the December portal. I was on the phone with agents every day.
General manager 1: If you’re dealing with a high-quality transfer, it’s usually an agent. If it’s a G5 kid or something like that, it’s usually the kid and their parents.
NIL and the transfer portal continue to evolve, and there’s little doubt more changes are coming soon. So how chaotic is all the player movement?
Assistant coach 4: College football is funded by investors who give money. We have to be careful how far we push the limit because you can turn some people off. The media, no offense to you, play to the lower-level obsessive fans and the exciting (stories) are the worst 5 percent of situations. As everybody reads about the worst stories of NIL, they get this vision that this is what it is and we’re turning some people off — when 90 percent of the focus is on 10 percent of the situation. Most of (NIL is fine). I’m good with it. There’s 10 percent of situations that frustrate me, but they’re the ones written about.
Player 2: There was an SEC school that offered me $500,000 this past year, and looking back, maybe I should’ve tried to take that, but it wasn’t a situation where they were going to be winning a lot of games. I had another big program ask, “Hey, is there a number?” The school I signed with the second time was like, “Hey, is there a number you need,” and I said no. They were like, “Cool, we really appreciate that,” and they still paid me. But it wasn’t like I knew what I was gonna get going in. They just said they’d do everything they can for you.
When I got there, I probably made $100,000 this past year just from their collective, which was nice obviously. But they didn’t sell me on that. That was just how it ended up happening.
