Jeff Brohm shows that coaches don’t need transfer portal to come and go as they please
By Pat Harty
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Some are saying that the transfer portal is out of control and that big-time college athletics is headed down a dangerous path with this new play-for-pay mentality.
Meanwhile, Jeff Brohm just recently resigned as the head football coach at Purdue to become the head coach at Louisville, which is his alma mater, and is in his home town.
Brohm couldn’t resist the temptation to return home, and the reported $35 million over six years that comes with it.
Brohm had a terrific playing career at Louisville, throwing for 5,451 yards, and remains among the school’s leaders in touchdown passes (38) and total offense while going 15-10 as a starter. He played eight seasons in the NFL and XFL and was inducted into the Louisville Ring of Honor in 2006.
Brohm has been the head coach at Purdue the past six seasons and guided the Boilermakers to the Big Ten championship game this season.
Louisville is home for the 51-year old Brohm, so he is arguably making a lateral move at best to return home.
But he’s making this move with no resistance, and with no rules or regulations in the way.
And the coach that replaces Brohm at Purdue will have done the same thing because college head coaches are free to come and go as they please, and to leave without any warning, in their quest to better themselves, and to find a greater level of happiness and fulfillment.
However, the days of defending the double standard between college head coaches and student-athletes by saying, “well, they’re getting a free education, room and board and top-notch food,” are over, and they aren’t coming back.
The NCAA hardly even seems relevant anymore with the rise of the transfer portal and name, image and likeness.
This is the new frontier, or some will say the Wild, Wild West where talent goes to the highest bidder.
This kind of stuff has been happening for years, but now it’s happening where everyone can see it because the rules have changed.
It’s possible to be concerned about the portal turning into a place where many dreams go to die, but also feel that student-athletes deserve the freedom to switch schools at least once with no resistance or rules standing in the way because head coaches are allowed to do it.
A long-standing double-standard has festered in college sports in which the student-athletes is often considered disloyal for wanting to transfer, while the head coach that leaves for a better job is just doing what any good business person would do to advance his or her career.
That argument just doesn’t work anymore, nor should it because it’s a double standard.
Hopefully, the transfer portal will settle down, and schools and donors will figure ways to make NIL work in a fair and reasonable fashion.
But if some school wants to pay some star player an outrageous amount of money, and its donors are willing and able to foot the bill, then more power to them because there isn’t anything to stop them.
The student-athlete has far more leverage than it did just five years ago, thanks to the portal and NIL, and it isn’t easy for the coaches and administrators to accept the power shift.
But they have no choice because the portal and NIL are here to stay.
And right now, that’s good for Iowa football because imagine the roster next season without adding some more players from the portal.
Michigan quarterback Cade McNamara is certainly a good start for Iowa in the portal, and Michigan tight end Erick All also appears ready to join McNamara in Iowa City, as both are expected to be in town on Thursday.
But they aren’t enough.
Iowa is desperately thin at receiver with just four on scholarship right now, and the only place to go for help is the portal.
The portal might be out of control, and it might be bad for college sports in the opinion of some.
But nobody, even tradition-minded Kirk Ferentz, is above using it when they need to address an area of weakness.
Or in Iowa’s case, areas of weakness.