[Ksyrup]

For me, it's the struggle between wanting these sports to be as free and open as they should be and for players to get in on the money and wanting some semblance of normalcy in the structure of how college sports play out - most players stay at one school for 4 years, there's some roster certainty, it's not just play a season and then throw a third of the players into a hat, pick names, and start the next season with drastically different rosters, etc. It just sucks from a pure view of what we've always known the sport to be.

I still view most of what has transpired as positive, but I do think the money thing should have been implemented in a better, more structured manner. The transfer portal was long overdue, and in fact, transfers have been allowed in all sports except FB and BB even before the portal. The portal was put in place to allow players the ability to contact other schools without interference from their existing school, because coaches had absolute discretion in permitting or refusing to allow contact.

The year before the portal was put in place, one of my daughter's teammates wasn't given permission to talk to another school until after their coach attempted to force the other coach to change an away game to a home game the next season in exchange for releasing her to contact the other coach. When they called his bluff, he finally caved in. I can't imagine what other kinds of BS coaches tried to pull in the past.

But a by-product of the portal is that there's no longer any natural evolution of the sports as they have usually unfolded over a number of years. One team's great recruiting class one year can all leave the next. It kinda sucks, but students shouldn't be forced to attend a college or play for a coach/school where they don't want to be.