Michigan Football: Building through just transfer portal is unwise

Michigan football and other U-M programs haven’t gone crazy adding talent via the transfer portal and here’s why that’s a good thing.

Ever since the one-time transfer rule was approved in the NCAA in mid-April, various college programs around the country have been taking advantage of it. The one-time transfer rule allows any NCAA athlete to go to a different school and play without having to sit out a year.

This rule has completely changed how some sports are viewed. With basketball and football, this rule has been exacerbated ten-fold. Although a lot of teams are using this rule, not every team is using it wisely.

Over the past few months, thousands of athletes have entered their names into the transfer portal. Not every player that enters their name necessarily goes to a different school, some come back and some declare for the draft, but overall, a school can find any type of player they want from the portal.

The point of the transfer portal for most programs is to plug a few holes here or there temporarily with stop-gap options until those positions become replenished again.

Some programs have gone overboard though with seeking transfers and are vastly reshaping their rosters with transfers. This is not the way to go about things, which Michigan football hasn’t, and here are a few reasons why.

Recruiting

From a recruiting perspective, this method of acquiring a lot of transfers at one time really puts a dampener on recruiting high school athletes.

High schoolers want to be recruited by any and every great school around the country. When a program recruits 40-50% of their roster via the portal, that really lessens the scholarships that they give out to high school athletes. This in turn affects that high schooler’s offer list and the kid might be really good, but there’s no more room for a program to take the athlete.

Coaching

From a coaching perspective, it’s never good when a coach has just one offseason to learn 30 new names and faces, find their strengths and weaknesses, and install an entire playbook from that. It is just not possible.

The higher the level of competition, the more complex the playbook will be. A lot of transfers have come to the D-I level of competition via the JUCO (junior college) route. JUCO is nowhere near the Division One level of competition, and because of that, the coaching and playbooks are much more advanced.

It takes time for a college athlete to learn a new system. Most transfers don’t just make an impact right away. They do it over repetition, an understanding of what is asked of them, and harnessing their talent. A lot of these transfers are only here for one year as well, so it’s a one-and-done type of situation. The coaches can’t really develop the talent like they would a multi-year player in the program.

Long-term outlook

Lastly, is the long-term outlook. Yes, a team will be much more talented in the short term if it acquires a lot of high-ranking transfers who can make an impact. What does that do for the long-term outlook of the program though? Like I mentioned before, quite a few of these transfers are already experienced veterans who just want one more year to get them to the next level.

This means that they are only around for one year. When a team has 20-30 transfers come in that are one-year rentals, that does not bode well at all for that program. The short-term (1-2 years) might be really great in terms of on-field product and production, but the long-term is bleak.

Those transfers take up spots on the roster and force other players already on the roster to leave themselves, thus causing even more roster turnover. At some point, a program has to develop what’s already on its roster. Why recruit athletes out of high school if you aren’t going to develop them? It makes no sense.

Again, it is ok to fill a few holes in with the portal as Michigan football did with Jordan Whittley and Alan Bowman, but remaking half of a roster with the portal is not the way to go at all.

There needs to be a balance between developing players already on the roster (who have patiently waited their turn on the depth chart to showcase their abilities) with filling some holes on the roster with one-year rentals. This will buy time to go out and recruit more high school players for those positions (who will be multi-year starters in the future for the program).

It is good to see Michigan coaches not taking this mindset.

Although Jim Harbaugh has seen a lot of players transfer out of the Michigan football program, it is not because he is vastly reshaping the roster all at once.

It’s because the players previously buried on the depth chart have outshone some of the other starters, forcing those starters to leave and seek playing time elsewhere. That is the way to go, every time.

With Juwan Howard, he only acquired one transfer this offseason in point guard DeVante Jones. If he wanted to, Howard could force a bunch of U-M basketball players to leave and fill those spots with transfers, but he hasn’t.

He has developed talent already on the roster and has continued to recruit high schoolers at a high level (and some will be multi-year players in the program). That is the way to go, every time.