Todd’s Take: Stability In College Athletics Is A Dying Concept And It's Bad For Fans

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – On Wednesday, the night after the Golden State Warriors defeated the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round of the NBA Play-In Tournament, video began to circulate of Draymond Green’s comments on former Indiana All-American Trayce Jackson-Davis.

If you didn’t see it, Green complimented Jackson-Davis for giving up his seat on the bench to rookie Quinten Post. Not only did an older player give up his seat to a rookie – unusual in the hierarchal world of athletics – but Post had passed Jackson-Davis in playing time at the end of the season.

We wrote about it Wednesday, and it got an overwhelmingly positive response. Indiana fans were proud of Jackson-Davis and the class he showed to a teammate.

It was a cool thing for Jackson-Davis to sacrifice his seat for someone else. It would have been cool regardless of who did it. But I don’t think the overwhelming prideful response from Indiana fans is an accident.

Jackson-Davis was a great player at Indiana. He’s the best college basketball player I’ve ever covered on a day-to-day basis – even if I was only here for his gargantuan senior season.

Jackson-Davis’s college career played out against the backdrop of the start of the transfer portal and NIL. When he started his Indiana career, the portal was in its nascent state, and NIL wasn’t the law of the land at all.

Still, both were in place by 2022, when Jackson-Davis could have used his leverage to get a better deal elsewhere for his final year of college basketball.

He didn’t. He stayed at Indiana and finished here. He played four seasons in a Hooser uniform and got the maximum out of his experience in Bloomington. I’m sure his Indiana experience enriched him both professionally and personally.

It’s a lot easier to demonstrate enthusiasm for someone when they reciprocate with devotion to you. Jackson-Davis is the most visible recent player to play his entire career at Indiana. Similar appreciation was also shown to Trey Galloway and Anthony Leal when their careers concluded in March.

On the women’s basketball side, it’s the same reason career Hoosiers like Grace Berger, Mackenzie Holmes and Chloe Moore-McNeil are beloved by Indiana fans.

Now, I don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole. Those players all got paid in the latter stages of their careers at Indiana. Perhaps not as much as players are making in the current portal, but they weren’t hard up for running around money.

Nonetheless, they finished the job they started. And given that college fans have always rooted for the name on the front of the jersey first? That is always greatly appreciated.

Those kinds of players are also on the endangered list.

The thing that bothers me about the portal and NIL isn’t the money. I don’t begrudge anyone doing what’s right for themselves financially.

It doesn’t bother me that players can move around at will. The courts have decided the obvious – that athletes should be able to move around without hindrance, just like coaches and non-athlete students have always been able to do. The not-so-past days when coaches lorded over the fate of their student-athletes and where they could play looks worse with hindsight with every passing year.

I think what bothers me isn’t that players can move; it’s that they so cavalierly choose to pull up stakes.

As of when I write this, the website verbalcommits.com has 2,278 names in its transfer portal database. With 13 scholarships available at 364 Division I schools, it means 2,278 players represents nearly half of the scholarship spots available in the division.

Not everyone in the portal is a scholarship athlete, but that’s beside the point. Why do so many players choose to disrupt their lives on an annual basis? Some players are playing for four or five teams in their careers.

Before I go on, let’s not be naïve. Some players go into the portal because they’re given no choice. The transfer portal is the plank that many coaches walk unwanted players down.

For those players, I feel sympathy. Those commitments coaches promise when players are recruited become very empty indeed. That's why I've deliberately not used the word "loyalty" in this column. Loyalty is paid lip service, but rarely practiced by players, coaches or schools. This isn't about loyalty.

It is about stability. There are also plenty of players who leave just because they can. Players who had stability, but choose to move on anyway.

I think that’s what bothers me the most about the new reality of college athletics. Stability seems to be a quaint notion, tossed to the winds of chasing a NIL bag or chasing that greener grass supposedly on the other side.

What endeavor operates like this? If you went into the real world and had four or five different employers in a half-decade, questions would be asked – either outright or inside an employer’s head – about whether the person they’re hiring could commit to anything.

I know what you’re thinking. College athletics are not like a real world job. However, there are jobs in the real world with upward mobility and the ability to cash in on opportunities. Even so, not everyone moves around on an annual basis just because they can.

Indiana basketball — Indiana's Myles Rice (1), Mackenzie Mgbako (21), Luke Goode (10) and Malik Reneau (5) watch as Anthony Leal shoots a free throw during the Indiana versus Ohio State men's basketball game at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall on Saturday, March 8, 2025. All might be gone for the 2026 season, pending Goode's attempt to get another year of eligibility. | Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

I know players have their reasons. Playing time might be better elsewhere, for example. Or at least that’s the hope. The reality is often different.

But it’s also just about green, period, as in legal tender. This particular portal season is chaotic because you have players trying to get their NIL deals done and paid before the (assumed) House settlement NIL clearinghouse becomes a reality.

Still, bumping around from one school to another is no reality I’d want to live. I’m sure there’s something to be said for life experience and all of that, and as long as the NIL check clears (it doesn’t always), it served its purpose.

But it doesn't come with much love. It doesn't come with any kind of legacy. You're a mercenary and often not remembered any more fondly than that at whatever school you stopped at for a season or two.

Players who bump around from one place to another will never know what Jackson-Davis, Galloway, Leal, Berger, Holmes and Moore-McNeil experienced at Indiana. Those career Hoosiers will forever be lauded by fans. They gave something to those fans, and the fans will forever give back.

That’s what this lack of stability steals from players and robs from fans. Legacy used to be passed from one group of players to the next. It mattered.

Now? That legacy is being blurred. Instability is the way of the world. Fans will always appreciate successful players who came from their favorite college, like one-year Hoosiers Jalen Hood-Schifino and Kel'El Ware did at Indiana, but the devotion?

Like everything else, it will be transactional. It was a lot more fun when that love was at least somewhat unconditional.

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