The phrase we often hear to describe the world of college athletics in the 2020s is “Wild West.” I’ve used that cliché plenty of times. The transfer portal and name, image, and likeness (NIL) have made college sports more about money than ever before, and in many ways it’s gotten out of hand.
The money these athletes get, especially in football, would make your eyes bug out. I was a little bit shocked when Carson Beck, starting QB for the Georgia Bulldogs, bought a quarter-million-dollar Lamborghini, and he’s not alone. But the way one athlete took advantage of the transfer portal and NIL proves that somebody has to do something about all of it.
Iowa native Kadyn Proctor was one of the top offensive tackles in the class of 2023. When he initially announced his commitment to play for the University of Iowa in the summer of 2022, ESPN called it “a huge in-state recruiting win for the Hawkeyes.” However, Proctor would flip his commitment to the University of Alabama the week before Christmas, telling local media that “I thought I was settling at Iowa.”
At the time, Proctor minimized the role NIL played in his decision to flip to the Crimson Tide, citing instead the prestige of playing at Alabama as well as the “resources” Alabama offers its players. Neither he nor his mother would disclose how much NIL money the Crimson Tide offered him.
“It’s not about the money because if people knew about the money situation, they wouldn’t be talking about it,” Proctor told reporters. “But I wanted to go play football at a prestigious school.”
Fast forward to January of this year. After playing one season at Alabama, Proctor announced that he was transferring to Iowa. ESPN reported on Jan. 20 that “He officially entered the transfer portal Thursday, eight days after Alabama coach Nick Saban announced his retirement and six days after Kalen DeBoer was hired as Saban’s replacement.”
“It’s home. I love home,” Proctor said at an Iowa men’s basketball game. “This is ultimately where I wanted to be. It’s the first place I thought of when I entered the transfer portal. So I had my mind made up when I entered the transfer portal.”
The Hawkeyes saw Proctor’s move as a coup, and Iowa’s donors opened their wallets to lure Proctor back to his home state. Swarm Collective, an NIL fundraising collective, raised $100,000 for Proctor in just a couple of days.
(For the uninitiated, NIL collectives are “independent organizations that fundraise money for various universities and give it to attending college athletes in the form of NIL agreement payouts.” Donors can give to general funds or can specify donations to specific sports or athletes. For example, I give to the Classic City Collective, UGA’s NIL collective, and my donations go specifically to baseball players.)
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Iowa has yet to start its spring practice, so Proctor has yet to take the field with the Hawkeyes. However, he did go on a Spring Break trip with his former Crimson Tide teammates, and he followed up that trip with the announcement that he will return to Alabama when the transfer portal reopens in mid-April.
By then, Proctor will have spent less than three months as a Hawkeye. And what about that $100,000 in NIL collective money? Proctor gets to keep it. Needless to say, Iowa isn’t happy about the decision.
“It is unfortunate that Kadyn has informed us of his intentions to leave our program today,” Iowa Head Coach Kirk Ferentz said in a statement. “We wish him well in the future.”
It wasn’t long ago that Proctor would have had to sit out a year if he decided to transfer again so quickly.
“In December, a federal judge in West Virginia granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) that made all multi-time transfers immediately eligible, reports The Athletic. “The NCAA agreed to convert the TRO into a preliminary injunction through the end of the spring, then clarified that all multiple-time transfers in 2023-24 will be immediately eligible next year.”
That move opened the door for Proctor to jump ship twice quickly enough to make heads spin. Proctor may not be the last player to take the money and run, according to one football coach.
“Watch what’s going to happen,” Ole Miss Head Coach Lane Kiffin told The Athletic. “You’re going to have these schools getting these portal guys in January and they paid them all this money and guess what? At the end of spring, they’re going to go back in and go somewhere else and have collected that school’s money, re-upped themselves, re-marketed themselves, and have never played a down for the school that paid them the money. You would never have a system like that in any professional sport ever.”
The Athletic is also predicting that this spring’s transfer portal period will be a wild one because of the precedent that Proctor has set. Earlier this month, The Athletic’s Seth Emerson mused whether this type of transfer portal insanity will lead to “donor fatigue.”
College sports are more about the money than they ever have been. It threatens to ruin so many sports if schools and conferences don’t get it under control. Here’s hoping someone will.