Coaches worried about tampering, agents after transfer portal change

Texas coach Vic Schaefer’s reaction when asked about the NCAA changes to the college basketball transfer portal window was hardly surprising given his team’s success.

“Fired up,” he said with a grin.

At the NCAA’s annual convention in Washington, D.C., last week, the Division I cabinet approved sweeping alterations to the transfer portal window for men’s and women’s basketball. After being open for 30 days beginning after the second round of the NCAA Tournament last season, now players can’t enter the portal until the day after the national championship game. The window to enter is also shrinking to 15 days.

But some coaches aren’t thrilled with this version of the transfer portal. Louisville’s Jeff Walz is one of them, he believes a 15-day window is too long.

“I’m not a fan of it. I think it’s terrible. That’s just my two cents and I’ve made that known,” Walz said. “I think you should have seven days to go into the portal once your season’s over. Once it’s over, you either know you want to transfer or you don’t.”

To sum up the collective thoughts of several women’s college basketball coaches around the country, this rule change solves one transfer portal problem — keeping the window closed while games are still being played — but leaves other issues unaddressed.

What moving the opening date of the portal does, some coaches argue, is it puts everyone on a level playing field when it comes to juggling the portal and the postseason. In previous years, many coaches had to balance preparing their team for play in the NCAA Tournament while trying to build their roster for the next season.

“Moving the transfer portal window to after the Final Four helps keep the focus on the postseason and avoids the distractions that come with mid-March roster changes,” Oklahoma State coach Jacie Hoyt told USA Today Sports. “It allows players to stay locked-in on the postseason experience, and coaches to focus on coaching and competing instead of dealing with roster uncertainty during the most important and enjoyable part of the season.”

Under the former structure, teams that weren’t competing deep into the postseason had an edge because those coaches could focus on recruiting instead of game prep. Last week, after the changes to the portal were announced, two coaches who competed in last season’s Final Four made the arguments for fairness.

“Last year, we’re in the Elite Eight and my conscience won’t allow me to go start recruiting kids when my juice and energy and focus needs to be on (my team),” Schaefer said. “We had a team in (the SEC), I think they recruited their entire — what is now four of their starting five — before we ever got done playing. So, I think it’s a great decision, and it’s just fair.”

UConn coach Geno Auriemma echoed Schaefer’s comments in his own way.

“They shouldn’t be allowed to do anything until after the Final Four, because it’s unfair,” Auriemma said. “And, yeah, it’s unfair for four teams — who gives a hell?”

He added: “The thing that was harmful to a lot of teams was the ability to have players on your campus on official visits while you’re getting ready to play (in the NCAA Tournament)… It’d be like having free agency during the NBA playoffs.”

Making the portal fair for all teams, and putting the blue bloods of the sport on a level playing field with the last-place team in the Mountain West or MEAC, was something deeply discussed among the members of the committee that helped shape this new structure. Seton Hall coach Tony Bozzella was part of many of those conversations.

“It’s not something that we took lightly,” Bozzella told USA Today Sports. “There’s no right answer… If we did the portal during the season, like some people suggested, we were going to have a problem there too because, is it fair that you’ve had a successful season and now you’re getting punished because of it? That’s the crux.”

Duke coach Kara Lawson didn’t have an extreme reaction one way or the other regarding the changes to the transfer portal window, but — without directly saying it — acknowledged the key issue facing coaches now: tampering.

“I don’t know that it changes things too much. I guess it is later than it was before, and you won’t have people playing during the time of it, but, you know, it’s not like the communication is starting then,” Lawson said. “It’s happening all year, and that’s the unfortunate part of the environment we’re in right now. That’s how some people already know where they’re going on the first day of the portal.”

Coaches are beginning to publicly grapple with their rosters changing every year because of the transfer portal and players getting paid via NIL and revenue sharing. This has indeed become college basketball’s version of free agency. Coaches are also coming to terms with dealing with agents — some professionals and some amateurs — influencing players’ decisions.

Multiple women’s college basketball coaches told USA Today Sports they’re already hearing from agents and handlers now — in mid-January — about players who intend to enter the portal in April. It puts those coaches in difficult situations.

“Several challenges remain in managing the transfer portal, with agent involvement among the most significant,” Fairfield coach Carly Thibault-DuDonis told USA Today Sports. “Agents are frequently facilitating early contact to gauge interest. In professional sports, such activity would constitute tampering and carry meaningful consequences. In the collegiate space, however, this behavior exists in a gray area that allows transfer-related communication to occur before the portal officially opens.”

Bozzella recognizes the issue posed by amateur agents or handlers, who might be a high school coach or family member of the player. And he understands Walz’s point too that, once March comes, most players already know whether they’re staying with their team or planning to look elsewhere.

“It’s so hard,” Bozzella said. “Basically, what you’re doing is now we’re giving the kids 45 days to shop around and make their own deals, and then come to you on the 45th day and be like, ‘Yeah, I’m staying now’ or ‘I’m going.’”

Thibault-DuDonis, who has guided Fairfield to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments, has a prediction for what will happen in the weeks leading up to the portal officially opening.

“Agents will continue to reach out while coaches remain constrained by restrictions that prohibit communication until a student-athlete is officially in the portal,” she said. “This dynamic creates significant challenges, particularly for the approximately 350 programs not competing in the final weekend of the season.”

Walz has a concern rule-bending is going to get worse under the new structure.

“Wait until that day when everybody goes in the portal and seven kids commit on the same day (the portal opens),’ Walz said. ‘Now, how in the hell did that happen if coaches aren’t talking to players? (The players) already know what they’re going to do.

‘The trickledown effect is going to be massive, and nobody’s even thought about it. … This (expletive) goes on all the time.”

For agents and coaches engaging in tampering, there’s little chance of being caught or punished. Most coaches are unwilling to call out their colleagues publicly for breaking the rules, and the NCAA has no current mechanism to certify agents or police them the way that professional leagues like the NFL and NBA do.

Undoubtedly, this won’t be the final change to the transfer portal. When the next window shift comes, when more rules or regulations are enforced, coaches have to be ready to adapt. For now, some of them are celebrating a small victory while rooting for more change.

“It will be good to know, obviously, when that 15-day period is up, then at least you know your roster from a retention standpoint. You at least know who’s staying,” Lawson said. “It’s all changing all the time. So, it’s kind of hard to be like, ‘OK, now it’s this and we’ll do this.’ You can’t really gain any traction on anything and you just have to be flexible.”