Josh Heupel reveals biggest roadblock to stopping transfer portal tampering

The new world of player movement in college football is total chaos. In back to back years, two major restrictions were lifted: (1) That student-athletes can transfer without penalty at least once; and (2) That student-athletes can now make money off of their own Name, Image and Likeness. Well, the joint eradication of the longstanding rules that previously prevented immediate transfers and NIL opportunities meant that tampering and pay-for-play became glaring issues within the sport and seem to be spreading like wildfire.

Nowadays, there are so many players across so many teams changing schools that you really can’t stop the tampering altogether. Even if you crack down on exactly when and how coaches communicate with the players, the players themselves are often friends with folks on different teams and can easily communicate between one another.

Many of the coaches at the SEC Spring Meetings down in Destin were asked how to fix the issue or at least put a lid on it. Tennessee’s Josh Heupel echoed the same sentiments as his compatriots, explaining that there’s really not a whole lot you can do big-picture for the tampering issue, but he says he just tries to keep his staff honest.

“You’re talking about transfers, trying to entice transfers? I don’t have a silver bullet on how you change that,” admitted Heupel. “There’s so many people that have contact with recruits, with players. And I say recruits because you probably had contact with them during the recruiting process, right, from coaches, families, to people that were influential in their life, coaches. I don’t know that there’s one thing. At the end of the day, the integrity of the people that are hired and the integrity of the staff is how you solve that problem.”

Integrity, says Heupel, is how you keep a handle on all the tampering. But even he knows that, across the country, massive levels of tampering will still go on. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart was in that camp, and when he was asked about tampering, he didn’t seem to bothered by it and chalked it up as something that just happens and has to be dealt with. However, he did note that the recent rule changes only exacerbated the problem.

“Look, I’m not one that gets deep into these issues. People have hot-button topics that they want to talk about; they’ve got a word they want to talk about,” said Smart. “I think tampering’s been going on for a long time. It’s probably more prevalent because it’s so much easier to transition from one school to another by way of the portal.”

Sounds like tampering is just part of the new landscape, now matter how hard the NCAA tries to regulate it.