The world of college rugby is a lot more laid back than that of most other college sports. This is, in great part, because collegiate rugby is governed by US Rugby. This makes it a lot more easy to deal with training, recruiting, and especially transfers. You want to switch from BYU to Life University and keep playing rugby? No problem, pack your bags, transfer your class credits, and head out the door. This is monumentally different from the way transfers are handled in sports governed by the brutal giant, the NCAA.
With recent changes to the way people can transfer from school to school (and still participate in D1 sports,) it is giving athletes a little more flexibility (emphasis on the little) to move between schools as they participate in D1 sports. While this does affect D2 and D3, we're going to set those aside because the main area where the transfer system is utilized and followed.
Any normal college student is free to go between schools with just a small amount of effort. Simply applying, getting accepted, and transferring the credits is all you really need to do in order to start a new adventure in a completely new environment. College athletes have always been locked up, with little to no available movement system. If they wanted to transfer, they lose scholarships and drop the sport. I have strong feelings that if a kid wants to move let him or her move! Sure this is an option many might consider taking but in reality it is almost a setback for most students who could excel in their current program more than they could moving from school to school having to constantly learn a new culture.
I still think the transfer portal might be a little too difficult to go through but at the same time, it offers students who used to have no say, more say in what they do with their lives. It gives college athletics more of a media push when people are moving because up until 2018, you knew the guy who Michigan recruited out of high school is going to be playing ball for your Alma Mater for the next 4 years. But not anymore. Get ready for more college sports columns addressing who is transferring and where they're transferring to.
Do I think the transfer portal is perfect? No. Not by a long shot, do I think it's a move in the right direction? Definitely. I think the more freedom we offer college students, the more interest it will drive in the teams, the sports, and the NCAA. Though I think it'll be a while before the system is perfected and by that time who knows, maybe the NCAA will be old news. They just might have to be old news before the transfer system is perfected.
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