What has changed dramatically in the past year is the amount of movement and mass harvesting of the talent by the elite schools.
In the past, a top G5 could hope to find some under the radar guys, develop them for 3 or 4 years and build some real team chemistry. Now we are seeing top G5 and lower P5 schools losing 25+ players to the portal in some cases. That's a total rebuild every year and in some cases is completely wiping out their 2-deep. It's VERY different from the past where movement was more limited because players had to sit a year if they transferred between fbs schools, and did not have enormous financial factors in play.
Maybe the smart play is to embrace the idea that we're going to get poached and go after talent that we'd normally miss on.
Hey Mr. 3/4* who's probably going to end up riding the pine for a couple years at <Insert big FBS school here> come check out NDSU. You'll have a better chance of starting immediately, getting national exposure along the way. If you decide to stay, you still have a very realistic shot at the NFL, if you leave you'll find that most of our transfer portal athletes find themselves on very good teams which boosts their NFL draft profile (whether true or not it's a good talking point). Oh, and along the way, you'll have a good chance to pick up a national championship as well.
Is it ideal? No, not at all (in fact I personally hate the idea). But as the portal is currently being run it is probably one of the most viable options moving forward, and obviously not all athletes will be recruited assuming they'll move on, but it might make a few positions more attractive for some of the higher * recruits.
This is undeniably true. We like to brag (coaches incuded) that the NFL will see you at NDSU and if you're an NFL caliber player you'll get your shot because those NFL scouts understand the high level of quality development and talent evaluation the program has exhibited.
The same statement is true if you substitute NFL with P5 in the above statement.
Definitely. The P5 might as well be the NFL now with the level of money and the separation between them and everyone else. What sucks in this scenario is top level players will last a year or two before they move on. It's like rebuilding your roster almost every year. Really hard to get teams to gel that quickly.
Without rule changes, I think what we've seen this year with turnover will be the norm. It's even more chaotic among the G5.
The top FBS schools have to deal with this already and they somehow figure out how to be competitive year after year despite replacing top talent who declare early or transfer out. It's not like you'll lose your entire team every year, honestly we probably wouldn't lose much more than we lost this year in terms of quantity of players.
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NDSU actually provides a good education for the STUDENT/athlete. High GPA's are typical for all of the teams and that means better real world employment opportunities after college. Do these transfers even consider that or do they just throw it all away to play ball.
Maybe all our guys who transferred were Geology, Geography or German majors and left solely because NDSU is cutting these programs?*
*too lazy to do the purple.
North Dakota State, a football team the big boys of college football should avoid like the plague, helped christen a $90 million renovation to Snyder Family Stadium — including a statue of famed Kansas State coach Bill Snyder himself — by taking a sledgehammer to the place.Bob Lutz, The Wichita Eagle, August 30th, 2013