03-15-2023, 10:20 AM
There's another element to all this that concerns me. In theory, and sadly it is a theory in many places, these are student-athletes. But changing schools is always a disruption to education, sometimes for the good, sometimes not. If a student is serious about his/her education and past his/first year, pre-requisites have been taken that are relevant to where the student is going, and may not be relevant elsewhere. Majors may have been chosen and prepared for, relationships with faculty developed, etc. I have difficulty seeing how the revolving door of a transfer portal does not damage the education aspect of going to college. One of the reasons that I love Stanford WBB and other Stanford sports is that the athletes are genuinely also students, concerned about their education, having chosen Stanford for academic reasons as well as athletic ones. Sadly, this is not the case for many other universities -- and when this is not the case, the ties to the school are less strong and the transfer portal is tempting as a way to further athletic dreams that are more significant than academic ones.