Colton’s Corner: NIL and the Transfer Portal are not ruining college football

The recent surge in head coaching changes in college football has caused quite a bit of a stir in the year 2024.

The latest coaching change came Thursday morning when Georgia State Head Coach Shawn Elliot announced his resignation to become South Carolina’s run game coordinator and tight end’s coach.

While the news of Elliot’s resignation was a little shocking considering Georgia State had just started spring practice, there was a particular that caught my eye.

Matt Barrie, a studio host for ESPN College Football, had spoke to Elliot at the Senior Bowl.

In a tweet, Barrie stated that Elliot told him that “NIL challenges and player retention at Georgia St was going to get worse in this new era.”

Barrie then ended his tweet by saying “Everything is fine. Nothing to see here.”

It has become a familiar theme around college football that Head Coaches are tired of having to deal with NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) and the Transfer Portal.

One of the most recent examples was former Boston College Head Coach Jeff Hafley resigned from his position to become the new defensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers.

In a tweet by Pete Thamel, a college football sports reporter for ESPN, sources had told Thamel that Hafley wanted “to go coach football again in a league that is all about football. ... College coaching has become fundraising, NIL and recruiting your own team and transfers. There’s no time to coach football anymore.”

So is college football being ruined by the Transfer Portal and NIL?

Absolutely not. For starters, both Elliot and Hafley were on major hot seats heading into the 2024 season.

Despite leading Georgia State to five bowls in the his seven seasons with the Panthers, Elliot hit a glass ceiling by having only one season of winning eight games.

Last year was the Panthers chance to finally break through after starting off the season at 6-1 only to lose their final five games to finish with a 6-6 record.

Hafley, on the other hand, finished with a 22-26 record at Boston College and failed to win more than eight games in a single season.

While I don’t think Elliot and Hafley will be the only coaches to make decisions like this in the future, I do think college football is in the early stages of weeding out coaches who simply can’t cut it in this era of college football.

If you can’t figure out a way to balance the transfer portal and recruiting high school players or build a successful program that makes players want to stay, you will be doomed to fail.

In the end, it was two coaches that saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship early with the Transfer Portal and NIL as innocent bystanders.

As for NIL and the Transfer Portal ruining college football, as Barrie suggested, the answer to this so called problem is obvious at this point.

Have the universities start paying players and signing them to contracts as employees to the school.

If players wants to transfer to a different school, have the other school buyout their contract.

Much how a coach’s contract can be bought out by another school, the same can be applied with players as well and is not limited to just football.

When the main people responsible for putting a university on the map while helping the school rake in millions of dollars of revenue, don’t they deserve a share of the pie?

It’s great to see college student athletes have the power to choose their own path.

Even before the transfer portal, Head Coach G.J. Kinne and Running Backs Coach and former Texas State quarterback Barrick Nealy saw their college athletic careers change due to the transfer process.

Kinne originally signed to play for Texas before transferring to Tulsa where he broke many school records.

Nealy was at Houston before transferring to Texas State and leading the Bobcats to the best season of the 2000s.

There is nothing wrong with transferring to a different school while making a little money at it too.

If a coach can abandon his team during spring practice, as Georgia State's Elliot did, then a player can leave a school he no longer feels comfortable in.

cmcwilliams @sanmarcosrecord.com Twitter: @ColtonBMc