College football hasn't been simple for a very long time.
There was maybe a decade or so, in between Teddy Roosevelt mandating that players stop grinding their skulls into a fine powder and bowl games meant to help prop up the Batista dictatorship, when the sport was pure and good and unencumbered by folly, but that time has long passed.
When I was younger, the Problem In College Football We All Have To Acknowledge was basically anything to do with recruiting. High schoolers getting paid, boosters buying cars for mom, fake summer jobs that dad doesn't have to show up for, and various other quaint rules violations that now just kind of seem cute instead of insidious.
The stress (as a fan) that came from rumors of rule-breaking was that A) your favorite team doing those things and getting caught, B) the rival of your favorite team doing those things and not getting caught, or C) your favorite team not doing those things and losing because everyone else was.
This was all predicated on the idea of everyone participating in a system governed by an organization with actual enforcement power, so once it was realized that that organization only existed in our heads, all of that worry kind of flew out the window.
I want to talk about what replaced it, but first, let's talk about interstellar travel in the year 40000.
See, there's this whole thing called the Immaterium, which is made up of the combined psychic energies of all sentient beings in the universe, including college football players. Navigation of this realm of existence is possible, and allows for faster-than-light travel to distant galaxies or to the National Championship Game, but only with assistance from the decrepit corpse of the Head Coach of Mankind using his psychic powers to guide NIL collectives through the Chaos that is the Immaterium's Portal (lest they be set upon by intergalactic demons or whatever).
I would pick the Immaterium pic.twitter.com/ZG9WObJDfb
— Christmas Bird (@LatvijaBird) March 10, 2022
I know it's weird, but I don't invent future history, I just tell it.
Anyway, my guess is that all comes about because of our current dalliance with the college football transfer portal, which has now ballooned to improbable size, filled with literally thousands of student-athlete souls trying to parlay past success into future also success, but this time with more money.
As Ramzy has pointed out, this is a predictable and unsurprising result of the influence of money in the college football equation, but also: holy shit is it a lot. Like, a lot a lot.
We saw 1,190 football players enter their name into the database on Monday, in a flurry of athletes transferring from around the country. That number went down to 351 entries on Tuesday, 225 on Wednesday and 190 on Thursday, as of 8pm.
The entries are slowing down, but the recruiting process is now picking up with the players racking up offers and starting to take visits.
So with all of that happening, you would be forgiven for hoping that the level of internal panic in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center is at the same fever pitch bellowed by the screaming horde arrayed against the Buckeyes. Quarterbacks are at a premium, and it's easy to have sweaty palms at the prospect of Ryan Day and company not forking over Ohtani money to the first guy to descend to Columbus from the portal, smoking and covered in transdimensional goo.
Pay a guy now! Nebraska's picking up McCord? If a bunch of corn farmers living in a distant arm of the Big Ten spiral galaxy can get him, then surely Ohio State can land the next High Priest of Slingin' It, even if they have to pay a gajillion megabucks!
But... I don't think that those are the kind of expectations that fans should have of either Ryan Day or the Ohio State football program.
Or, at least, I don't think that's how things are going to play out. There are a few factors at play here. First, Ohio State still has Lincoln Kienholz and Devin Brown on the roster, and Day probably isn't super excited about making any moves that might entice either of them to check out the transfer portal. Better to keep them both engaged and happy than pick up a dude for the hell of it and end up an injury or two away from playing a walk-on.
Secondly, you've got an ostensible five-star quarterback coming on campus soon, and while Air Noland likely didn't expect to be starting in his first season, bringing in another quarterback who might start multiple years wouldn't be a great formula for keeping him around, either.
Finally, there's only so much NIL money to go around. If you're Ryan Day, it might make more sense to go after a lot of good-to-great linemen and linebackers and so on rather than one quarterback who might be 2/3rds of a C.J. Stroud. You know that you're going to have some holes in your roster, so you might as well fill them.
Portal entries for the Big 10 through Sunday morning: Indiana- 26
— NCAA Transfer Portal (@RivalsPortal) December 10, 2023
Michigan State- 25
Purdue- 25
Ohio State- 16
Minnesota- 11
Illinois- 10
Maryland- 10
Wisconsin- 9
Rutgers- 9
Nebraska- 6
Iowa- 6
Northwestern- 4
Penn State- 3
Michigan- 0
So like I said: it's a lot.
“You have to construct your roster on a yearly basis, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Day said. “It’s no longer one of those things, are you going to use the portal or not? It’s part of college football.”
It is, and maybe a comforting fact that will help Ohio State fans sleep at night is that, ultimately, navigating the transfer portal is a lot like crafting an elite recruiting class. And Ryan Day and company have been very, very good at that over the years.
