Ryan Day expresses frustration with transfer portal, NIL usage by other schools

The transfer portal, NIL and player acquisition were inevitable topics at pretty much any National Signing Day press conference and Ohio State head coach Ryan Day was not exempt from discussing them. Like many of his coaching peers, he’s frustrated.

The hodge-podge of NIL philosophies — one mans NCAA violation for a recruiting inducement is anothers run-of-the-mill endorsement deal — resulting in confusion and “grey” frustrate Day the most. And he pointed out that the lack of guidelines from the NCAA hamstrung clarity in the NIL world to this point.

“I think the frustration is just that — and I think it’s for everybody across the board no matter where you are, I think all coaches would share the same thing: It’s just that when this got passed, there was very little guidelines,” Day said. “There’s just a lot of unknowns of what can and can’t be done and what certain people are offering the players and just things like that. Now, again, whether it’s collectives or businesses or things like that, you just — it’s hard to tell. It’s hard to figure out where everything’s at. So any time things like that happen there’s hard feelings and frustration.”

Day stressed then the differences between the various parts of these issues. Player acquisition is part of the equation, and that itself involves two separate but related worlds: recruiting and the transfer portal. Then on top of that, NIL gets layered in, with nuances stemming from which realm of player acquisition NIL is being used.

The NCAA has recently and controversially altered enforcement guidelines that, in essence, establish a “guilty until proven innocent” paradigm for enforcement. Were a school to be charged with a violation for a recruiting inducement, for instance, the school would then be effectively compelled to turn over information in order to prove their innocence.

While the NCAA sorts out enforcement, Day is setting frustrations aside and leaning in to the NIL and transfer portal realities of college football.

“That being said, we can start to see the dust settling here. We’re starting to figure out what’s going on out there, what the market is, what it all looks like,” Day said. “Again, I feel confident that we’re going to have a good plan here in the next couple months. And excited about that, because it’s going to be important. Especially for our current team, but also for the class of ’24.”

Day isn’t shying away from using NIL just because he’s frustrated, and pointed out that a bulk of the Ohio State roster is making out just fine with NIL deals.

Plus, at Ohio State, the sell is always going to be bigger than dollar and cents.

“But to say over the past year there hasn’t been that type of angst? Yeah, I’d be lying. There is that feeling. And the biggest thing I think we’ve done though is we’ve advocated for our guys. I think the guys that have come in, in this class, love the product Ohio State has to offer. And, certainly NIL is a big part of it. And some of our guys are doing really good — a majority of our guys are doing very, very good — but it’s also the product of Ohio State and what Ohio State has to offer. The City of Columbus and our program and our development and playing in the Shoe,” Day said.

“There’s so many things that come with being an Ohio State Buckeye, too, that so many of these guys understand.”