Jeff Brohm on NIL, transfer portal problems: ‘I’m all for fixing the system’

Going into his third season as the head coach of the Louisville Cardinals, Jeff Brohm has been working to build the program into a consistent ACC contender amid rapid changes to college athletics. That includes NIL and the Transfer Portal.

Those changes in college athletics have caused some problems for coaches, especially as they try to build up a program. It’s made for a system that Brohm is hoping to find a way to fix.

“I’m all for fixing the system as much as we can and tweaking it and helping,” Jeff Brohm said. “What the true answer is, I’m not 100 percent for sure on it. I have my ideas.”

While Brohm has his ideas on how to fix things in college athletics, he didn’t share them at this time. However, he did take the time to acknowledge directly how it changes how he has built rosters in his first few seasons at Louisville.

“But for us, you’re always going to have guys graduate. When we go sign veterans out of the portal sometimes they just have one year left, so we’re anticipating change every year now. Once you kind of start that cycle, you can maybe bring the numbers down a little bit but it’s probably gonna continue for a while,” Brohm said.

“Of course, with the amount of times these guys can transfer and all the factors that go into why off the field, it’s just going to happen. You’ve just got to pick and choose who are vital to your success who, you know what, it’s just not gonna fit and maybe they need to try something else. You can’t let it bother you. You can’t let it affect your feelings. We had a couple guys that we liked, sure, that we didn’t want to leave but it just wasn’t going to work out. So, you go and get the next best compliment you can to bring in with your football team. You try to develop the young guys you’ve got, get those guys ready to go and you move forward. I think the more you think about it, the more time you’re just going to waste.”

In his first year at Louisville, 2023, the Cardinals had 25 players leave the program and 27 enter it. This year, in the 2025 Transfer Portal class, Louisville has the 62nd-ranked class, according to the On3 College Football Team Transfer Portal Rankings. That class has 21 players leaving and another 21 players entering the program. Notably, Louisville has brought in a veteran transfer quarterback for each season Brohm has been with the program.

There are likely to be further changes to NIL and player compensation with the House Settlement. On top of that, windows for the Transfer Portal to open have been adjust several times. So, more changes could come, but for now, Jeff Brohm says he’s working to succeed within the current rules.

“So, from a coaching standpoint, you’ve just got to play with the rules that are put in front of you, make the most of it,” Brohm said. “And try to piece this thing together and have the best team you can every year. Every year will change and every year there easily could be a new team or two or three that emerges based on how this portal works.”