Boston College's Jeff Hafley saw problems in NIL, transfer portal

Jeff Hafley is leaving college football to take the Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator job, according to multiple reports.

The Boston College head coach brought the Eagles to bowl eligibility in three of his four years on Chestnut Hill. But the former Ohio State defensive coordinator and longtime NFL assistant chose to walk away from the college game, a stunning development.

Hafley’s decision to leave BC and the ACC, however, is partially rooted in the ever-changing landscape of college sports. On3 spoke with the Eagles’ head coach eight days ago when he was on the road to meet with recruits. At the time, Hafley was still clearly invested in the college game but he saw cracks across the game.

NIL and the transfer portal have defined the sport in the last 30 months. In the interview with On3, Hafley was blunt in his assessment of the battles he was fighting at Boston College between tampering in the transfer portal and the promise of false dollars.

“How do you define tampering, right?,” he told On3 on Jan. 23. “Agents calling kids and telling kids that they can get them at this school for this amount of money and this school is interested. What’s true and what’s not true? I’ve had an example of hearsay. This school will take me out of the portal right now and give me this amount of money. And then I pick up the phone and call that school, call a buddy of mine, and it’s, ‘No, we don’t even know who that kid is.'”

The Boston College head coach saw the major issues the NCAA will have to grapple with in the weeks and years to come. Just this week, the governing body launched an investigation into potential NIL infractions at Tennessee. The search centers around a former elite quarterback prospect.

But it’s not as simple as the NCAA launching an inquiry. Tennessee and Virginia are fighting back with a lawsuit that would wipe out the body’s ability to ban NIL deals with recruits and transfer portal players.

Hafley saw the advantage of NIL, of athletes being able to earn money they justifiably have earned. But he also had a front-row seat of seeing tampering and athletes passing up a degree and NFL prospects for short-term cash. Returning to the NFL allows him to get back to being a football coach, not a CEO trying to put out fires.

“Look, there’s some really good people and some really good agents,” he said. “And just like anything else, some really bad ones that are trying to take advantage of kids. And it’s not right, and it’s not fair. There’s kids that are leaving good academic schools with a semester or two semesters left, where they’re going to get a life-changing degree, and instead, they’re getting convinced to transfer. It’s way bigger than making a few bucks right now. I get it, that’s easier said than done. I’m all for it. Let’s pay the players and give them some money. I think it’s all good, and I totally respect it. But we got to look at the degree aspect of this thing, too.”

Boston College wide receiver Zay Flowers turned down a $600,000 NIL package and another $300,000 deal to transfer, as ESPN reported in May 2022. Flowers opted to stick with the Eagles and was a first-round NFL draft pick with the Baltimore Ravens this past spring.

But going through that with Flowers certainly opened up Hafley’s eyes to college football’s free agency. He told On3 he went through a similar encounter with offensive lineman Christian Mahogany, who stuck with BC and is now considered a top-100 prospect in the 2024 NFL draft.

Having the largest NIL war chest has become crucial to retaining and attracting top talent. Hafley saw past that, realizing how athletes were turning their college careers upside down for financial packages.

“One, is the money real?” he said. “Can they trust the people that they’re talking to? Because a lot of the time, it’s not. So let’s look at that. Two, how close are you to getting your degree? I think we forget that these are student-athletes, these kids are in one of the best schools in the country, and you don’t want to throw that away and not play the long game where you’re gonna make a ton of money.

“… I think it’s completely drifted away from what name, image and likeness was supposed to be.”