What Is College Football Transfer Portal Tampering?

It can be hard to decipher what's real and what's not with NCAA Transfer Portal tampering. Many fans are curious about it, so here are a couple of examples of what appears to be happening.

First off, the concern is why a player goes into the Transfer Portal in the first place. Did a football player get recruited to enter the Transfer Portal by another college football program or did it happen organically? That's the issue that's being discussed quite often but few people seem to know how to stop it.

South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Shane Beamer certainly had questions based on comments from the 2023 SEC spring meetings. The Gamecocks lost key players from their 2022 team like running back MarShawn Lloyd to Southern California. The timing was surprising according to Beamer.

"It was strange based on conversations I’d had with guys two or three days before they went in the portal. It’s interesting how things happen.”

For those of us in the recruiting media, cheating to obtain talent is not a new topic. Numerous programs have given cash, cars, and other inducements to high school football recruits for decades.

That being the case, the ability to seduce a college player to enter the Transfer Portal and then enroll at another school could be considered worse.

Why? Because many of those players who suddenly left had already become proven players under the direction of another college football coaching staff. One could argue that practice is about as underhanded as it gets.

Allow the player to become a proven talent. Then, swoop in and get him to transfer to another college football program. Of course, which schools are involved – or not involved – is important.

Recently, there's been much discussion about whether Alabama made overtures toward Arizona quarterback Noah Fifita. According to CFB Stats, he's a signal-caller who completed 72.4% of his passes as a redshirt freshman in 2023, while throwing for 2,869 yards and 25 touchdowns as well.

His father, Les Fifita, has commented on the situation multiple times. The first time came via The Athletic and here's the quote in question.

“Alabama is the only one we were really interested in outside of Arizona and staying and obviously Washington.”

Since the news started to spread that Alabama and head coach Kalen DeBoer allegedly tampered started to arise, the elder Fifita posted on X and gave a quote that differs from the original quote.

Absolutely fake….. blatant lies… just the world we live in i guess. Never have I spoken to Coach DeBoer or anybody from his camp.

Crazy these dudes hound you to talk and then spit out 💩 for likes and views.

Just literally had this talk with my HS kids about doing things… https://t.co/oijqOheqX2
— lesfifita (@lesfifita) February 5, 2024

Going by the varying comments, whether Bama was or was not tampering is all but impossible to say. It's an interesting case and one that's currently shining bright across social media because Alabama is a college football giant and in the SEC. That discussion leads to the following point.

This overall topic is likely to grow in importance as the offseason continues ahead of the next Transfer Portal window which operates from April 16-30. Do not be surprised when more news of tampering arises with any given number of college football programs.

In the end, it's hard to definitively prove which players are being tampered with and which ones are making transfer decisions on their own. Until more is learned, college football fans should at least be cautious about believing that a player is jumping from one school to the next without any warning.