High school athletes looking to get recruited aren’t getting the same opportunities as they were five years ago due to collegiate athletes taking advantage of the newly founded transfer portal.

Five years ago, the NCAA made a decision to create the transfer portal, which allows college athletes to transfer from school to school without losing a year of eligibility. Some argue that this is good because it creates more opportunities for collegiate athletes if they decide they aren’t happy with the college decision they made, but at the same time, some argue that the portal takes away many opportunities for high school athletes.

John Reagan, a former college football coach of 27 years, explains, “I think that when I started coaching 29 years ago now, the responsibilities and expectations of a coach were very different than what they’ve grown into. And it really was fun to watch players develop both on the field and then players develop from young men into college graduates and fathers and husbands and those kinds of things.” The experience of being a college athlete has changed over time. The transfer portal has created a different dynamic to being an athlete in college.

Reagan said, “I think you have to face the fact that what the transfer portal has on one hand is allowed athletes to say, Hey, I made a mistake and not lose any eligibility and still transfer to another school. In the past, you could do that, but you had to transfer down a level, you couldn’t transfer to the same level, but now with the transfer portal, you can.”

Jayden Sumpter, an SCH running back is experiencing this from the front lines. He is trying to play football at a high level college, but is having trouble being recruited.

He said, “I do be seeing a lot of running backs that will transfer into a lot of different schools. And like, sometimes it would be the schools that I was having conversations with in the past. And once they get the transfer from another college, the conversations will stop.”

As Jayden describes, high school athletes get overlooked once someone from the transfer portal starts talking to the same school as them. The transfer portal has made the recruiting process a lot more difficult for rising collegiate athletes. Jayden explains, “The transfer portal is like a good second opportunity for people that’s already there in college, but for people that are not in college, it kind of messes us up because a college coach is gonna go to a transfer student, first of all, because they’re already in college and more developed, and you don’t want to risk giving a scholarship to a new person if they can give one to a more experienced player.”

Coach Reagan and Jayden both had similar things to say. They both explained that there are more opportunities for collegiate athletes, but fewer opportunities for high school athletes.

“Over the last few years that has taken a different path, it’s just going a different direction. I think that ties into the transfer portal a little bit.” Reagan also said, “It’s made it easy in a lot of cases for athletes just to softly quit on their team.”