Volleyball Fan Life-Random Thoughts on the Effects of the Transfer Portal and the NIL
Since I don't know much about the nitty gritty details about the Transfer Portal nor the NIL, I wonder about the after effects.
The landscape in collegiate athletics has shifted inexorably in the past few years. Much of the change comes from the introduction of the transfer portal followed closely by the NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness).
Even though the portal and the NIL were introduced separately, they are inexorably entwined in reality. The intertwining of the two has immensely impacted college athletics and has created such a astronomical disruption on college athletics that it is difficult to treat them separately.
I am not well versed in how the other non-revenue sports are faring, but the portal and NIL combination has rocked volleyball, juggling the ranks of the haves and have-nots in college volleyball, and not just on the top level. NIL deals in six figures have been rumored for volleyball athletes.
Soon, the as yet unknown repercussions from the NCAA revenue sharing settlement will further muddy the volleyball picture. This allows the universities to directly pay the athletes. I won’t even try to dissect into that hornet’s nest since I know that I am ill qualified to explain or predict what the repercussions will be. This interview with Jamie Gordon, the AVCA president.
As well as this interview with Keegan Cook of Minnesota by Lee Feinswog of 900 Square Feet.
serves as the main starting point for my understanding the issue, which both have made clear, are as y et unsettled.
I don’t feel qualified to analyze nor explain the legalities any of those things with any accuracy, nor do I have the time nor the energy to dive into the minutiae — I would have grown a set of dorsal fins long ago if I really cared to indulge in diving into the rabbit hole. I also never believe any Google jockey dispensing their mythology as if they are the alleged experts on something coming from two obfuscation machines like the NCAA and the courts, so I moved my focus to the people involved. This is an exercise in extrapolating rather than interpolating because it is much more interesting. I hope my meanderings will open up some dialog.
My first set of questions is: how does this sea change affect the people who are existing in the middle of the picture, those who are experiencing the impact and are most affected by the completely transactional nature of the Brave New World of college athletics? The second, and more important set of questions is: how will these changes affect our sport, its future evolution and development, both within the United States and globally, as well as how the change in the system will change the people who play and coach the sport? Knowing the adaptability of human nature, how will people adapt to the system and how will the system change people?
Today’s collegiate athletics’ modus operandi had been flipped 180 degrees from what we had known throughout its history. Whereas the previous status quo was overwhelmingly skewed towards the advantage of the universities and the “employer” side of the ledger, where the fates of the athletes are completely determined by the universities, the athletics administration, and to a certain extent by the coaches. The skew is now flipped to the advantage of the athlete, although it has not quite completely flipped, the universities and intercollegiate athletics still have quite a bit of control over how the athletics are operated and administered. Even though the NCAA and universities are selling the narrative that they have completely lost control of collegiate athletics, they haven’t, even though their control of the narrative has significantly diminished.
The athletes now have the right of movement whereas they used to have to adhere to the “employer’s” rules; but do not weep for the universities, as they did not lose all leverage in the transactional relationship between the “employer” and “employee”, they have the power of the purse string through the NIL. Many universities have leveraged that power to make their teams better from year to year rather than the usual four year cycle via the NIL, just as long as the schools are able to generate enough funds to entice the athletes. This kind of financial unknown leverage favors the well-heeled athletic programs in those Power Conference that had made significant money from their football and basketball programs, but even that assumption can be challenged as not all Power Conference schools are generating the kind of revenue for NIL funding because some non-power conference schools have impacted the transfer player markets, some smaller schools are outbidding the large power conference schools for the services of players who are in the transfer portal. Although the power of the NIL is not necessarily a great equalizer when it comes to accruing playing talent, you still have to aggregate the talent into a unified team; it is a significant advantage.
The biggest beneficiaries are of course the athletes, or “employees”, they get two very precious commodities: the freedom to move to the highest bidder from year to year and a paycheck. Not every player will be plied with NIL money of course, but they can transfer to their hearts content. As I understand it, the players is allowed to engage a financial advisor to ensure that their NIL money is well taken care of, a lesson learned from previous experience with collegiate players who did not safeguard their payday after they had turned professional and squandered their windfall only to become destitute after their careers are over. The major difference is that those stories are about the professional athletes who entered the professional ranks in their early twenties, with a few exceptions. In the present reality, the athletes’ age range is between 17-23, a different level of world weariness and maturity.
Which makes me wonder about whether these younger athletes are getting the same level of advisement about their career opportunities and athletic development in addition to their financial fortunes? Who would be providing that advice? The college coaches who are wooing them to either stay at their school or to move on to another school? How would the athletes be assured that the coaches have their best interests in mind when they receive the advice? How do they know that transferring is better for them, that their playing will improve with the change? Of course, if they are unsatisfied with their initial decision, they are free to transfer the following year, even though continuity is vital to an athlete’s development, depending on their present status and where their ceiling is. This is a wager that these 18–23-year-olds must make with their future, a future clouded by large doses of uncertainty, this is true whether they decide to transfer or stay where they are: they may get injured, they may not be competitive or mesh with the new roster of the team, they may end up on the bench or play a limited role, the team culture may not be what they thought, ad infinitum. There is a myriad of extenuating factors, and humans being humans, they all believe at the time of making the decision that those uncertainties does not apply to them.
Predictably, the system does not always work for everyone. There will be a stockpile of the top players in the perennial powerhouses who can pay the top NIL money while many collegiate athletic programs have to make hard decisions as to how deep they want to or can afford to wade into the Brave New World. We have seen some surprising schools making a run at the national championship with their rosters — much like the rosters of some perennial powerhouses — are stocked with players from the transfer portal. There are some Power Conference schools that are not willing or unable to raise that kind of funding for their volleyball NIL slush fund, while there are traditionally non-powerhouse schools that are willing to raise their volleyball NIL slush fund. The only thing we do know is that there will be a reconfiguration of the usual pecking order. A shake up of the status quo is usually welcomed by the fans but this kind of shakeup will not only relegate some of the perennial power schools and allowing some of the perennial also-rans to move up into the penthouse suite; it will also create an even wider gap between the top programs and the rest of the collegiate volleyball world.
There are some questions that are being bantered around by many: whether the different divisions, as defined by the mix of NCAA, NAIA, and NJCAA will morph into something much more stratified by the necessity for each program to generate funds; whether those previous designation will fade away into oblivion because there is no reason for them to exist; what level of stratification will exist: and how this stratification would or would not work. It is a wide-open path, the organically grown stratified structure will have a symbiotic relationship with how the athletic programs will evolve over time. I suspect that the mutual effects will birth something that is completely unrecognizable in a few years. Which begs the question: is this better for everyone involved? Will this result in a win-win situation?
The players’ value in the marketplace as well as where they will end up is also stratified with the top players going to the top programs and the dominos will fall as they may. It is the free market doing what it is designed to do but does that necessarily benefit everyone involved?
What about those players who, for whatever reason, had not blossomed by the time they are entering their senior year in high school? What about those players who need development in some part of their overall game, but do not show up on the radar for the programs in the top tier of the stratified structure? If we are to believe in meritocracies, they may eventually rise to the top and the transfer portal will allow them to move up in the quality of teams as they go through their college career; but the question is: will those players attain the top level of achievement for their abilities? Will this stratified structure obstruct their path to meeting and exceeding their abilities? What if the player playing in the lower levels of the stratified structure ends up not receiving the development and growth which are needed to improve their game, thereby impeding their progress? How many of these players will fall by the wayside through no fault of their own? Granted, many players also do not progress while under the system previous to the portal and NI, it is a complex function of many things, the player must take responsibility for their progress, but what of our, the coach and the system’s responsibility? Will there be more of them being denied opportunities in any new stratified structure? Will there be less of them? Will a stratified intercollegiate structure put up more or less obstacles to those players who are not the top tier prospects?
Since the future potential beyond the upcoming season is not valued in a transactional relationship, will the players potential be ignored in this Brave New World? Will the underdeveloped players be jettisoned in exchange for the best player on the market? It has happened already; the real question is whether we are ready forfeit any pretense of developing potential and talent if the player’s development does not follow the single season timeline? Will this mindset trickle down into the lower levels of the stratified structure of collegiate athletics?
This kind of mindset exists in the professional sports leagues, it is the survival of the fittest. Are we ready to declare collegiate athletics a professional league to go with the three professional leagues already existing?
What if those players, fully recognizant of what is at stake in their senior year of high school, mentally take themselves out of the competition, they aim for the level where they feel they belong, not extending themselves beyond where they end up? There are those players who do that now in the pre-portal and NIL system, but once again, will more of those players disappear into the ether in the future than they do now? As before, these are not new questions, but will the stratification push players away from all of volleyball? How many? And one ponders the unanswerable: could they have been a contender?
At one time, the purpose of higher education, including the unique American collegiate sports system, was ostensibly to help develop the student in a four-year cycle. The purpose and nature of higher education has changed in recent years and higher education has evolved into a means to employment rather than a means to an education. The same evolution has also evolved in collegiate athletics, except that the vast majority of non-athletes need to obtain their credential, a college degree, before they can be welcomed to be a part of the work force; whereas the athlete, in the present circumstance, is starting their career as freshman at eighteen years old. This has already happened with revenue sports many years ago, it is now happening in non-revenue sports.
Players are not the only constituency with skin in the game, coaches in college sports are another critical constituency. They are now caught between the workforce — the players — and the portal and NIL “system”. The new system does not reward them with better compensation nor better work environment; instead, they have been given more responsibilities, responsibilities that had never existed before, responsibilities that requires them to create and scratch out solutions from thin air.
Some observers have asserted that our new collegiate sports reality as we know is akin to turning intercollegiate sports into professional sports. In reality, the collegiate athletics landscape as it exists now is a unique mishmash that has heretofore been unknown, and is, in many ways, much more challenging than in the traditional American professional sports.
A professional team can count on a large part of their rosters returning each year because players are under contract for a number of seasons, any transient movement in the rosters comes from free agency — either losing players to or gaining players from the market — but those transients are limited. The transformed collegiate system has potentially 100% turnover in every roster because of the transfer portal; granted, potentially does not mean that there will be 100% turnover, but that potentiality hangs like the Sword of Damocles over the necks of every college coach.
A mid-major basketball coach recently admitted the boosters of his college program that in his version of reality, he spends almost all his time recruiting players, whether they are in the portal or they are already on his team. He must juggle the NIL money management part of the recruiting process as well as the athletic evaluation part of the recruiting process. University of Minnesota just created a NIL manager staff position whose sole responsibility is to track and manage the NIL funds for the entire roster.
This coach also says that his time is continuously spent on recruiting, on finding players for his team, present and future. Once he is successful in convincing the player to join his team, he has 10 months with that player to re-recruit the player because the player may not stay beyond that time, they may just as easily go out the same door that they came in. Recruiting never stops, it is continuous and all consuming.
As was mentioned before, the nature of the relationship between the coach and player must now necessarily be transactional given the real constraints imposed by the portal and the NIL. What was once a mentor/mentee relationship has evolved into a boss/employee relationship. Psychologically, both the coaches and the players’ behavior to one another boils down to both sides asking the other side: what have you done for me lately?
The coaches are now continually adapting their approach to their work by learning to live with what they have on their roster after the hubbub of the portal season has died down and doing the best that they can to create a cohesive team out of that chaos. If they had done their job by retaining key components of the previous year’s roster and recruit the right players to not only filling the unexpected gaps and improving the roster, they need to create the team as they had envisioned it and train them according to their ever changing vision as they are going through the continuous recruiting process. The coaches already had seemingly recruit continuously prior to the advent of portal and NIL, the difference comes from the fact that they can be patient with players, they did not have to recruit for the entire roster, and they were not surprised by the transfers. The mission of developing players over at least the four-year cycle was not a fantasy, that mission was based upon the growth of each player on the roster in that four-year cycle. Intangibles like team chemistry, timing, team system development were all in the context of four-year cycle. Which will, inevitably, result in the coaches being focused on achieving a team that is greater than the sum of the parts rather than cobbling together a team that is just the sum of the parts.
Our system of collegiate athletics is predicated upon the development window of the four-year cycle, coinciding with the time needed to start and finish a college career. The artificially imposed four-year cycle dictates the development progress for the players, to become better players, to learn the game, and to grow into more astute tacticians and strategists. In the post transfer portal and NIL era, the coaches now have to squeeze their development vision into twenty-five percent of the time that they had before. In season planning is shortened to that time-scale because that is the time limit imposed on them, it is all they have with any particular roster. This will sometimes translate to abbreviated development plans for the players that need the development, thus robbing the future for the sake of the present.
There will certainly be chaos in many programs, as both the magnitude and the speed of the changes are overwhelming, but the significant changes in the volleyball landscape prior to the portal and the NIL, specifically the pandemic adjustments, somewhat prepared the coaches to deal with the possibility of the Black Swan events, except now the Black Swans are no longer Black Swans, they are the reality.
One salient characteristic about coaches is that they are used to adapting, improvising, and overcoming obstacles thrown onto their path. They must be prepared to change quickly because those that don’t are not in the profession for very long. We have seen that the programs that have risen to the top in volleyball in the last few seasons have not only quickly adapted to the changed landscape, but they have also gained from the disruptions. The speed of reaction is not surprising, but we are seeing some exodus from the coaching ranks. Several championship coaches from football and basketball, as well as volleyball, had left the profession rather than continue in the new landscape. I wonder if the increased stress directly traceable to the sudden changes had made some of them accelerate their timetable for retirement because this was not why they entered the profession. People are willing to do all the hard and unpleasant work in exchange for the rewarding and satisfying work, but everyone has a tipping point. When and how much does too much hard and unpleasant overwhelm the rewarding and satisfying? I wonder if perhaps the impact of the portal and NIL had motivated them to retire early. Turnovers in any profession are normal, but it makes me think about why. There are many younger and energetic people who will step into the void and who will succeed, but I wonder how much the profession had lost with the exodus, and whether chain of knowledge would remain intact? Reinventing the wheel is a great exercise for those learning, but what does it for the body of knowledge?
Another set of questions veers away from the rarified air of the highest level of volleyball. These questions are about how the younger player’s perspective will change. Club volleyball has already evolved away from the club volleyball ethos a few decades ago, when I started coaching. I won’t go into the details, but the cost of the club volleyball experience is spiraling ever upward, the perspective and expectations of the players, coaches, and families has definitely changed; they are now mostly focused on the promise of the extrinsic rewards from playing club volleyball. It started with families eager to pay for improving players’ playing level in order to play in high school; to mounting campaigns to pay for a college education through volleyball, even though the probability of success is quite small given the number of players playing the game versus the number of full scholarships available. How would the promise of NIL money change the focus of clubs and families? Would the heightened expectations increase the amount of entitlement precipitously as the amount of compensation increases just a precipitously?
Finally, there is the question of how the sport of volleyball will evolve under this American collegiate transformation?
The American system of sports is unique. The vast majority of the world do not have collegiate athletic systems as we do. In some instances, collegiate athletics functions as a farm system for professional leagues, but at the same time the collegiate athletics systems functions as a feeder system for the Olympic sports. Prior to the proliferation of American professional volleyball leagues in the past few years, the American collegiate players had means of continuing to play volleyball after their graduation from college other than to play internationally. Some players thrived and developed while others decided that kind of vagabond life wasn’t for them and they came home to do other things with their lives.
Coach Mark Lebedew wrote an informative blog post to explain to the North Americans how the European sports systems function. (https://marklebedew.com/2024/09/08/north-americans-guide-to-european-sport/) I will leave his blog as the definitive explanation about European sports, where many of the North American players play.
This symbiotic interaction between the collegiate volleyball and the development of the national team players has closely impacted how the roster for the USA NT is filled. The potential national team candidate players had to play overseas, learn the international game, and come home to train with the national team during their short breaks from their professional obligations. Those players who are sought after by the international teams are usually also invited to work with the national team. Many of those players were in the USA Volleyball pipeline through numerous junior level teams made up of underclassmen that competes internationally, but the serious engagement point for consideration for the national team usually starts after the end of the player’s collegiate career, with a few notable exceptions.
How would the changes wrought by the portal and NIL change the pipeline feeding the national teams? As the top players in the collegiate system are free to move from program to program every year, would that help them to better adjust to different playing styles that they will see as a national team player? Or will the constant changes in where they play and who their coaches are impede their development? How would the transient state of their career affect the way they learn and develop their game knowledge and affect their ability to attract international teams or to be able to have success playing internationally?
Another source of uncertainty to add to the mix comes from the sudden proliferation of domestic professional volleyball leagues. Would the combination of portal and NIL inflict so much transience to some player’s collegiate careers that it affect their ability to excel in the domestic professional leagues? We all hope that these professional leagues succeed so that the former collegiate players can have a choice between playing internationally or domestically, but are those playing experiences equivalent in the context of developing national team players? As the professional team rosters are right now, it is a mix of seasoned international fixtures and young players coming straight out of playing on campus. It is interesting to see how the mix of players will change as the leagues evolves in the future. Unfortunately, these questions cannot be answered until those players who started to play college volleyball in the portal and NIL era has moved onto the professional and international stages of their playing career because the experiences of the players who are now in the pipeline have only partially been affected by the transiency. It isn’t until those players who have had an entire collegiate career under the portal and NIL rules that we can judge how these rules affect player development in college, how have they been prepared for a career beyond college, and how these players will fare in the professional ranks, both internationally and domestically. This is assuming that the rules will stay the same long enough for us to observe the steady state effects.
Just thinking out loud.