The transfer portal has been the place to be after the National Collegiate Athletic Association passed its Name, Image and Likeness policy on July 1, 2021.
No one should be judged for entering the portal, just as no one should be judged for deciding to take a new job in another company or state, even if they made prior commitments.
We need to value student athletes’ well-being, ambitions and autonomy, especially when it comes to their choice of school.
In 2018, the transfer portal emerged, which changed college sports forever. 247Sports defines the transfer portal as “an NCAA database in which players who have opted to transfer are listed. Those with access to the portal include coaches, athletic administrators and compliance officials.”
Then, from 2021 to 2022 multiple changes were made, such as “All NCAA players given one-time transfer exemption,” meaning “once the only players who could transfer freely were grad transfers, in April 2021 the NCAA voted to allow athletes in all sports to transfer once without sitting out a year of eligibility.”
During this chaos, in 2022, AzCentral reported on Jayden Daniels, a then Louisiana State University student-athlete, being scrutinized by his former teammates at Arizona State University for leaving.
Yet he thrived when he left and is a current quarterback for the Washington Commanders and Heisman Winner, so why should people act so outwardly offended by something that simply is not about them?
I understand why a team would take it to heart, but we respect peers and friends for moving schools for a better education and colleagues for taking a higher-paying job or moving to a city they love. That should stand for student-athletes, too.
At times, transfers get a bad rap, and people assume money is the only factor in why someone chooses to go to a new university. Transfer students are definitely not one of a kind.
“I decided that I wanted to try something new,” Kylee Manser, a senior women’s lacrosse player at University of Oregon, said.
Manser is graduating in spring 2025 but is eligible for another year on the team. She spoke about her experience transferring her sophomore year from the University of Indianapolis to UO.
She was told her coaches were no longer part of the program in late August of her sophomore year, despite a close-knit team and just having won a national championship.
“The whole summer of my freshman to sophomore year, I had planned on going back to UIndy, and then the coaching change happened, so I had a really short amount of time to decide what I wanted to do,” Manser said. “It was definitely a difficult transition but my teammates were very supportive of it, and there were a lot of girls leaving as well, in the same situation.”
From a mix of internal and external pressures, she had a limited amount of time to decide where to transfer.
She stated, “everything was very rushed” and noted that although she was lucky to come to Oregon and loves her team and coaches, she still speaks to her two best friends from her previous team every day.
Some transfers like Manser come to a university early and are able to set their sights on the next 3-4 years of eligibility there, while others are looking for a short-term team with their last 1-2 years of eligibility, wanting to make an impact.
When you put yourself in a student-athlete’s shoes, you can imagine how difficult making a life-changing decision within a few weeks may be.
Just as Oregon fans appreciate our transfers, we can also respect them when they decide to leave.
Likely, everyone can relate to being put in a situation that requires deciding where their future career will take them, so with the additional pressure of being watched on a national stage and having fan bases that follow athletes’ every move, it’s a reminder that student-athletes are special but not superhuman.
