Marcus Freeman shares plan for 'roster enhancement' through transfer portal

In the rapidly evolving world of the college football, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman broke down the challenges in chasing ‘roster enhancement’ through the NCAA transfer portal.

It takes a lot of homework.

“You’re always monitoring the portal. It’s the new part of college football,” Freeman said. “I don’t know the exact numbers, but obviously starting Monday the numbers continue to increase on people entering the portal. We’ve had guys on our team enter the portal. That’s going to be a part of roster enhancement, is the ability to look into the portal and really investigate.”

That deep dive into all the particulars is incredibly important. And incredibly challenging.

“Not just say, ‘OK, this guy is coming from this school, let’s go after him,'” Freeman said. “It’s really trying to make those calls and research. You do a lot of research on these high school kids. You recruit them and you evaluate them and you talk to them for a lengthy period of time.

“These guys that get into the portal, it’s a quick turnaround in terms of, ‘Are they the right fit for this program or not?'”

Transfer portal ‘roster enhancement’ requires research

As Freeman pointed out, if you’re truly looking to upgrade your roster you need the right fits from the transfer portal.

Simply taking players just to take them is a quick path to potential chemistry issues.

“A lot of time has been spent on just looking,” Freeman said. “Is there a person in the portal that’s going to enhance our roster in the right way? We can’t just take anybody. We have to get the right fit for our program, for our roster. So that takes time to really investigate. And then you’ve got to recruit him.”

Yeah, that part.

The velocity that information is flying at coaches has rarely been so high. Once you’ve taken it all in and made a decision, you still have to go land the guy. The homework was only the first step.

“That’s to identify if that’s the guy,” Freeman said. “Then you’ve got to recruit him and try to get him to believe that this is the best place for him. It’s not a quick process, but the reality is decisions have to be made pretty quickly with the early signing day coming up here in less than two weeks.”