Purdue center Zach Edey responds to fake reports that he's entering the Transfer Portal

Former ESPN college hoops broadcaster Dan Dakich ruffled some feathers in the basketball world on Tuesday when he fired off a tweet reporting that Purdue big man and National Player of the Year favorite Zach Edey was in the Transfer Portal.

“My people are telling me Zach Edey is in the transfer portal,” Dakich wrote in a tweet, adding his own view on the new era of college sports: “The transfer portal and NIL suck.”

Four minutes after that strange news drop by Dakich, Zach Edey himself responded to Dakich’s tweet by quoting it and saying: “My sources are telling me this is false.”

There you have it, straight from the man himself. Zach Edey is not currently in the Transfer Portal…according to — it’s a pretty good source — Zach Edey himself!

It looks like Dakich may have been duped by a fake report of Edey’s entrance into the Transfer Portal. A Kentucky fan account with the handle “pelsyear” arranged his profile to look exactly like that of ESPN’s college hoops insider, Jeff Borzello. On Tuesday morning, pelsyear tweeted the following from his replica Borzello account:

“BREAKING: Purdue C Zach Edey is entering the transfer portal. The 7’4 big man averaged 22 points, 13 rebounds, and will almost certainly win National Player of the Year. I’m told Edey is seeking a massive NIL number that he didn’t think was attainable in West-Lafayette.”

Aside from the obvious difference that the handle “pelsyear” is not remotely close to “jeffborzello,” the accounts look fairly identical. As a result, the pelsyear tweet has been seen by 100,000+ accounts (as of this writing not even an hour after the tweet) and has more than 200 retweets or quote tweets plus more than 350 likes.

Seems pretty clear that Dakich likely glanced at this tweet, didn’t look too closely at the Borzello “report” and assumed it was true that Edey was transferring and demanding massive NIL compensation wherever he went. Which would explain the intial Dakich tweet and his stray hate for NIL.

Shortly after the Dakich and Edey exchange that likely stemmed from pelsyear’s shenanigans, the pelsyear account was suspended and the tweet taken down. That Twitter tyrant Elon Musk must be trying to silence fake news spreaders like pelsyear. But sports fans know, those sort of tweets are all for fun and games. No need to start taking away accounts over such silliness.