Greg Sankey opens up on impact of transfer portal on high school football

It’s been compared to the NFL. “The draft” represents high school recruiting and “free agency” represents the transfer portal in the college football landscape.

Just a couple years removed from immediate eligibility for transfers, the impact of the portal has become a big talking point. Whether it’s enough conversation, according to SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, isn’t so easy to answer.

“Do we have enough? That will be for people to evaluate,” Sankey told McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning during SEC Media Days. “We do have that conversation.”

During the 2023 transfer portal cycle, 2,716 players entered the portal, according to the On3 Transfer Portal Wire. That’s up from the 2,332 transfers in 2022, which was a drastic increase from 761 in 2021.

That’s led to questions about how such high transfer movement impacts the high school recruiting front. The portal has become a safe haven of sorts for teams wanting to fill holes on their roster or try to engineer quick turnarounds, such as at USC, Louisville and Colorado over the last two offseasons. Especially in the NIL era, Sankey said he’s had conversations about how the portal and college athletics landscapes impact how things run at the high school level.

“The transfer culture was part of my Texas High School Coaches Association, kind of after-the-presentation dialogue with coaches,” Sankey said. “Because part of what college does, it sets a tone at the high school level. And high schools are now dealing with transfers and NIL activities and offers by agents and third-parties to move here and move there for deals.

“You think about, like, what are we doing for communities with high school football? What are we doing? We also have started to pay attention, because the transfer portal’s relatively new, we’ve paid attention to the high school recruiting patterns, which have been impacted on a national level. And even in our programs, it will vary.”

Starting with the 2023 transfer cycle, the NCAA implemented certain windows for players to enter the portal. For football, the first cycle ran from Dec. 5 to Jan. 18 and the second one was from April 1-15. That early window ran into the early signing period Dec. 20-22, meaning coaches could have contact with transfers before signing parts of their high school recruiting class.

As a result, a conversation started about how the portal windows and signing periods should — or shouldn’t — line up.

“Our coaches spent a, really, fair amount of time in February discussing where should we have signing day for high school players?” Sankey said. “And then, where should the transfer opportunities fit in so you can think long-term first with high school players and development and then, meet your roster needs. Right now, it’s a little bit of the reverse. People are out in the transfer market filling spots, and that’s inhibiting opportunities for high school players.”

Of course, this entire conversation gets turned on its head soon. In 2020, the NCAA handed out a blanket waiver for the 2020-21 seasons as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The athletes who were freshmen that year are now seniors with one year remaining in 2024-25 if they want it. Once those “COVID years” are done, things will start getting closer to a sense of normalcy from a roster-building standpoint.

Sankey pointed out some possible shortcomings with the blanket waiver and how that impacted high school recruiting. Some teams have opted for experienced graduate transfers with COVID years instead of incoming freshmen, and that took roster spots that could’ve gone to high schoolers. One other wrinkle to the extra year was scholarship numbers remained the same, something Sankey would’ve changed.

“Remember, we’re in a COVID extension era right now,” Sankey said. “We still have those who were participating during COVID who are going to be around a little bit longer. We didn’t change the scholarship numbers, which I felt, personally, was an error. I argued for some adjustments there because we’ve limited incoming opportunities for high school students across the board in college athletics, something I view as problematic.

“We want high school sports to be strong for a lot of reasons. One is its attachment to the educational model, attachment to communities, development with coaches and athletics directors overseen by a board rather than club sports where you don’t have that same kind of oversight. We’re going to get through this COVID eligibility cycle, but we also in football, have to think about timing and how decisions are made to fill a roster.”