Dick Vitale calls out major college basketball rule as cheating

Legendary college basketball figure Dick Vitale commented on the current state of the transfer portal, calling it damaging to high school recruiting. Vitale claims the transfer portal is currently used by teams to passively recruit, cutting down on real recruiting efforts for high school players about to make the leap.

Dick Vitale on transfer portal affecting college basketball recruiting

“It hurts high school because rather than recruit the high school prospects, some — not all — coaches get the word in the recruiting network that if ‘John’ gets his name in portal that they would take him. THAT IS FLAT OUT CHEATING and teaching kids loyalty means zilch. Transfer is no problem but should sit a year,” said Vitale via his Twitter account.

Vitale has been one of the loudest critics of the NCAA Transfer Portal since the rule limiting transfer availability was changed. Originally, any student transferring schools had to wait an additional year before being eligible to play for their new school — imposing a penalty of sorts for players looking for a new situation. Critics of the old rule cited the ability of coaches to abandon a program at-will if another job opportunity came up, leaving kids they recruited behind.

While Vitale doesn’t outright dislike transfers, he believes the current state of the portal allows for teams to “cheat” recruiting by making no commitments to players. If a player expresses their desire to play for a school but an opportunity isn’t available, teams can make it known that they will be interested in signing them via the portal down the road.

This leaves incoming freshman athletes with the ability to “try” a team for a year and eventually move on to a more prestigious school when they’re ready to. As coaches and schools around the nation adjust to the changing college athletics landscape, many have been critical of the portal as a danger to stability within teams. Others have found success via recruiting from the portal, such as Miami and coach Jim Larranaga — who cited their ability to recruit transfers as a big reason for their Elite Eight appearance.

Transfer portal background information

The NCAA Transfer Portal, which covers every NCAA sport at the Division I, II and III levels, is a private database with names of student-athletes who wish to transfer. It is not accessible to the public.

The process of entering the portal is done through a school’s compliance office. Once a player provides written notification of an intent to transfer, the office enters the player’s name in the database and everything is off and running. The compliance office has 48 hours to comply with the player’s request and that request cannot be refused.

Once a player’s name shows up in the portal, other schools can contact the player. Players can change their minds at any point and withdraw from the portal. However, once a player enters the portal, the current scholarship no longer has to be honored. In other words, if a player enters the portal but decides to stay, the school is not obligated to provide a scholarship anymore.

The portal has been around since Oct. 15, 2018 and the new calendar cycle within the portal begins each August. For example, the 2021-22 cycle started Aug. 1. During the 2020-21 cycle, 2,626 FBS football players entered the transfer portal (including walk-ons). That comes after 1,681 entered during the 2019-20 cycle and 1,709 during the abbreviated 2018-19 cycle. In comparison, 1,833 Division I basketball players entered the portal during the 2020-21 cycle after totals of 1,020 in 2019-20 and 1,063 in 2018-19.