The Real Scandals of College Football Part 2
The Uses and Misuses of the Transfer Portal
This is a free online newsletter for Jason Stahl, Executive Director of the College Football Players Association (CFBPA). If you are a past, present or future college football player, I ask that you consider becoming a member of the CFBPA. For a short YouTube introduction on the CFBPA, click here. Members of the general public who would like to support the CFBPA can donate at this link or volunteer at this link.
The transfer portal officially opens in college football today. “The portal” has received much attention over the past few years as players, through several legal wins, now have the ability to transfer to another school just as any other student would. For those unfamiliar with the world of college football, this was not always the case. In the past, players had severe restrictions placed on their freedom of movement from one school to the next. When they did move, they had to sit out of their sport for a year or more as a penalty. So, players are definitely in a better spot today than they were in the past. In a future which includes collectively bargaining with players, they may bargain a more limited form of movement, but until then they should be treated just like any other student and allowed to move from one school to the next at will. This change has undoubtedly been good for players as a whole.
Nevertheless, today I’m going to look at the portal in a different way as I continue my newsletter series “The Real Scandals of College Football” as part of the CFBPA focus on player health, safety and welfare. Part one of the series focused on the deaths of college football players. This newsletter will focus on the downside of the transfer portal that rarely gets talked about—namely, that the loosening of the ability for players to transfer has allowed some coaches to more easily discard injured players.
As a jumping off point for understanding this reality, I urge you to read this Bloomberg News article which came out last Friday. I’ve been interviewing for this story for quite some time and the end result is a model of investigative journalism that deserves to be read in full as it covers quite a bit of territory. Entitled “Pushed to Play,” the story looks at how, even in the era of player empowerment and players making money, the health and safety concerns within the world of college football are overwhelming. The story looks primarily at two college football programs—The University of Washington and the University of Minnesota—as lenses into why and how player welfare concerns are still sidelined within the world of college football.
For longtime readers of this newsletter, there is a lot of new information about my past as an advocate for football players at Minnesota and so I urge you to read the article if you’re interested in this. However, for the purposes of this newsletter, I want to focus on the the example of Emeka Megwa—a player at the University of Washington who is a prime example of the downside of the transfer portal that rarely gets discussed.
Megwa was a highly-sought-after high school recruit at the running back position who committed in 2021 to play for head coach Jimmy Lake at the University of Washington. Before his final high school season, Megwa injured his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and had it surgically repaired. The university, to their credit, honored Megwa’s offer saying they would develop a clear plan for his rehabilitation and recovery over his first year at the school. However, all of this changed when Lake was removed as head coach and Kalen DeBoer was brought as new head coach (deBoer is today the head coach at the University of Alabama).
At this point, Megwa alleges that the new coaching staff rushed him back into practice before his rehab was finished and against the plan put in place by his medical team. He alleges that coaches publicly ridiculed him in front of his teammates until he felt he had no choice but to acquiesce to their demands to practice. This eventually led to Megwa re-tearing his ACL and, he alleges, deBoer telling him to “hit the portal” as there was no longer a spot for him on the team. He was then isolated from the team; had his meal card cut off; and was left with thousands in unpaid medical expenses.
We know all of the above as Megwa has now brought a lawsuit against the University of Washington seeking damages for the above mistreatment. As we see, Megwa’s independent medical team’s plan was disregarded by coaches—a topic I’ll be dealing with in my next newsletter. But, here we also see how the new free flow of the transfer portal can be used by a coach who wishes to jettison a hurt player. This case is set to go to trial in early 2026 and so we’ll see the outcome. However, I have little trouble believing the story as it syncs with hundreds of stories that I’ve heard from current and former players in similar situations—especially those who are forced to deal with an uncaring new head coach.
Thus, the transfer portal, so often celebrated as a tool of player empowerment, is probably more often than not used to disempower players, especially injured players. In the accompanying documentary video for the Bloomberg News story, sports agent Henry Organ sharply defined how and why the new world of college football, including the transfer portal, works for some players and not others. Organ argues that we now have two different classes of players: Dudes and Pedestrians. Dudes are first-team all-conference players and/or players with high NFL draft grades. They command big NIL deals; respect from coaches and fans; and the power to transfer to score an even better deal for themselves. Pedestrians are the vast majority of college football players who are still subject to the whims of a bad coach who can use the new world of college football to gain even more power over the player. Without proper protections, the vast majority of players may have even less leverage than they once did as it is much easier for a coach to tell an unwanted player to hit the portal—even if that player still needs medical care.
Thus, in the end, protections for the great mass of college football players will have to come from the outside—ideally an independent players association like the College Football Players Association. If you’re a past, present or future college football player, I urge you to become a member today to help us build.