According to rivals.com, 1,635 football players have entered the transfer portal since it opened after this past season. According to ncsasports.org, there are around 858 colleges that have a football program. That means that there are around two athletes in the transfer portal for every school.
Basketball produces similar numbers. According to on3.com, 1,134 basketball players entered the transfer portal last year.
College coaches are the ones that have to manage transfers. These coaches must recruit transfers to their school and persuade their players to stay. They must do this on top of planning for the next season, making sure that the athletes they have keep their grades up and recruiting players that are in high school.
This is why I believe that being a college head coach is harder than being the head coach of an NFL or NBA team.
An NFL or NBA head coach would only have to watch film of the draft prospects, see which free agents they want and plan for the next season while a college coach has to do what I mentioned.
An NFL or NBA head coach would not have to make sure that their players are attending class and getting good grades. In college, players can’t play if they don’t meet certain academic standards, so coaches must talk to players to make sure they’re doing their best academically so they can play in the games.
The NFL and NBA do deal with players leaving and coming onto their teams, but it’s not as many players as there are in college. In college, players usually leave because a better school is recruiting them, or they want more playing time.
This is true for Eastern too. Redshirt sophomore safety Blake Ruffin transferred to the University of Louisville, a school that is one division above Eastern. He is one of the seven players that entered the transfer portal for Eastern football. Four of those seven have now transferred.
The Eastern men’s basketball team is an example of how many athletes transfer schools. 11 of the 15 players on the team are transfers.
Name, image and likeness (NIL) laws are also a reason that being a college coach is harder than being a professional coach. Under NIL, college athletes can be paid to use their name, image and likeness in ad campaigns, commercials, video games and more. While the college itself doesn’t pay for this, boosters do, and richer schools have more or richer boosters to pay their athletes.
Because of this, if a coach is at a smaller school, it is harder to persuade an athlete to choose their school over one that can pay the athletes more. A professional coach would not have to deal with this as much. In the NFL and NBA, there are salary caps that limit how much a team can spend, which puts all the teams on somewhat even ground.
A college coach has much more responsibility than an NFL or NBA coach, making their job harder.
Luther Yoder can be reached at 581-2812 or at lyoder@eiu.edu.
