For Lincoln Riley, the challenges of 'roster management' in 2020 are unprecedented

Imagine being a college football head coach in 2020.

Some of your players have chosen to opt out of this season.
You’re still recruiting future players, but only in a virtual world. No in-person contact is allowed with next year’s freshmen.
Your senior class has been given an extra year of eligibility for 2021 — if they want it. Most will. Some won’t.
As per usual, some of your juniors (or third-year sophomores) might be exploring their opportunities in the NFL.
But now, every player has also available to them the chance to explore other options in the transfer portal.
The NCAA is expected to pass legislation in January for one-time transfers to be immediately eligible — no more sitting out a year as a transfer.
And, of course, grad transfers can come or go depending on which direction the wind blows.

If coaches thought roster management used to be a challenge — welcome to 2020.

“Those conversations this year will be a little bit different than what we’ve ever had,” said Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley. “It’s probably going to be a lot more conversations with a lot more people. Now you are getting to the point where you are going to have to have that conversation with everybody on your roster for the next three, four, five years.”

Riley said at least in terms of early entries to the NFL, he doesn’t expect any “big surprises” this year. There will be a handful of underclassmen who submit an evaluation request from the NFL’s College Advisory Committee. Some of those on this Oklahoma roster are easy to guess. Some are less so.

But this year, Riley must consider the outgoing seniors in that group. Some will want to go to the NFL, like any year. Some will see a chance to improve their draft stock by playing a second senior season in 2021, due to the NCAA extending student-athletes’ eligibility clocks this year.

“We’ll start to have some initial conversations with our guys during the bye week,” Riley said last week. “Some of those have already gone on. We keep pretty open, consistent dialogue with our guys throughout the year. I don’t think there are going to be any big surprises.

“But obviously with the guys who are seniors right now, you are going to have all those guys with an option to come back and play again. And I think we’ll have a handful that will. It’s conversations that you have to have.”

The 2021 season isn’t the difficult one. The NCAA has extended the scholarship cap next year from 85 to 110. That allows for an entire class of 2021 freshman (25 initial scholarship counters) to join an entire outgoing class of 2020 seniors returning (however, due to routine attrition, almost no team has 25 seniors).

It’s the 2022 rosters and beyond that will have complications.

“This year,” Riley said, “with the roster exception, it’s going to be a little different in that even if a guy does come back, it’s not really going to affect what you are signing because you get the bump for every senior that comes back.

“Now, in the following years, it will be a lot to work through. But yeah, a lot of those conversations are happening — or will happen quickly.”

Riley said the transfer portal has added a level of complexity to building a roster that never existed before.

Previously, coaches might get a phone call or an email from a college football player already at another school. But that process could only begin, according to the rules, after the player obtained a transfer waiver or got permission from his coach, athletic director or school to transfer. Sometimes, rarely, those waivers never came. That left player with two options: either walk-on at his new school for a year, or just stay put.

Now, coaches keep an eye on the transfer portal daily because once a player tells his school he’s entering — no more asking permission — the school only has two business days to put his name in. After that, anybody and everybody can recruit him.

“You’ve got to keep in mind — at least how it is right now — your initial scholarships and your 25 rule, which I don’t know if that will last much longer,” Riley said. “You’ve got a lot of things to deal with, and especially if they do open up this thing where guys can transfer and be immediately eligible. That’s going to change it too.”

It all sounds like a wonderful world in which your favorite school can supplement awesome recruiting with even more awesome transfers and, this year, everyone gets an extra year to play and teams get 110 scholarships.

But it’s probably less wonderful if you’re the coach at a school that loses a lot of grad transfers, or just undergrad transfers taking advantage of the one-time transfer rule.

“I think every rule has unintended consequences. I think this one will be no different,” Riley said. “Do I support it? It's a tough question, honestly. I think there's circumstances where a player should be allowed to and should be allowed to play right away. There’s certainly extenuating circumstances. I do get that those are difficult to define or make a decision on who gets it or who doesn’t. I think the obvious concern is do you have just a mass of players just leaving places the second that something doesn’t work out for them.”

It's certainly less wonderful at a school that can’t afford to pay for the entire senior class to come back (the NCAA said it will keep that element at the school-by-school level, and as all schools are already financially strapped, many will be unable to fulfill every request).

And it’s less wonderful for a coach tasked with reducing the scholarships from 110 in 2021 back down to 85 in 2022.

“We’re pretty picky (about transfers) anyways,” Riley said. “We’ve probably been a bit more picky on taking a commitment for a guy we offer, because there is going to be so much go on.

“Guys in that junior class, all of a sudden, a lot of those guys decide to come back and play that fifth year and there’s no telling what your roster could look like. Because the way we understand it right now, you’re not gonna have the exception after this year. It’ll be interesting.

“We’re certainly not trying to down really good players. But at the same time, we’re making sure that it’s — regardless of how those things play out — it’s somebody that we would absolutely want and at a position that we absolutely need.”

And now throw in the coming legislation that will allow players to profit off their own name, image and likeness. Schools won’t pay that money. It’ll be up to each individual athlete to strike up their own marketing deals. But still, that will factor into some marginal NFL prospect leaving or coming back. Or it might play a role in deciding college destinations for not only recruits, but potential transfers.

Players at ABC U., for example, only average $2,500 a month from their NIL rights, while players at XYZ U. average $5,000.

The transfer portal will look like a New York City train station.

Good thing the average salary of the top 40-paid FBS head coaches is $4.96 million.

“It’s a lot to keep track of,” Riley said. “Staffs that handle it the best will be able to sort through what’s happening and — not predict the future, but at least have an idea of where this thing’s going and be able to kind of think and be ahead of the game.”

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