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Washington Coach Opens Up on Tampering Within NIL and Transfer Portal

Washington Huskies head coach calls for regulation on tampering by enforcing NIL contracts and a clearer definition to navigate college football.

Maddy Hudak

Chris Pietsch/The Register-Guard / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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The NCAA's lack of regulation over the transfer portal and NIL deals has made navigating college football more challenging than ever.

Washington Huskies head coach Jedd Fisch is the latest in the sport to address the need for rules and parameters on rampant tampering.

Fisch joined the Canzano & Wilner podcast to address roster management and the pervasive issues that arise with no penalties or clear definition of what tampering means in college sports.

"I think it's very easy to stop, but for some reason it seems like no one's agreeing with me," Fisch said. "Make contracts mean something. That would be the way to stop it. Penalize a team to lose five scholarships for tampering. What is the definition of tampering?"

Fisch brings up multiple complexities in one sentiment. Contract enforcement would easily regulate tampering with outlined penalties and a contractual relationship established. Does that mean the athletes are now employees?

As it stands, NIL is not pay-for-play, and if a player is only contracted for NIL rights, that doesn't stop their ability to leave and play for another team. Litigation led to an unregulated, chaotic transfer portal that has thus far seen all rulings go in favor of athletes in court for Sherman Act violations restricting free trade.

Further, as demonstrated by the Xavier Lucas dispute with the Wisconsin Badgers, where he eventually plainly enrolled with the Miami Hurricanes, the transfer portal may not even be a tangible thing at all.

However, the Huskies coach isn't wrong that tampering is a permeating problem that has put college football programs in nightmarish scenarios as the regular season ends.

"The only way to stop tampering is if we have better regulation on whether movement is going to be real or not," Fisch said. "People call our players after every single game. What I think certain teams don't realize is that the relationship you have with your own player is far stronger than the relationship somebody thinks they have when they call one of our players. The information comes back to us all the time, so we're aware of every tampering event that occurs."

He revisits his central point: what is tampering? Is it permissible or not? Fisch also highlights the ambiguity surrounding third parties, like NIL agents, who bear no responsibility to the universities.

Fisch contrasts how this doesn't happen in the NFL. A quarterback who just lost the NFC championship isn't receiving calls the morning after from the team that beat him with an offer that doubles his salary.

Tampering unquestionably has left a sour taste within the sport and has blown up programs' trajectories through the actions of agents with no established fiduciary duties to clients who are taking up to 20% of deals. The only way agents benefit in this industry is by moving their clients.

Based on the near frantic nature of the way player movement unfolds nowadays, it's naive to think these agents and third parties are weighing the best interests of their clients outside of the bottom line.

To revisit the NFL example, Fisch gave the explicit example of the Minnesota Vikings calling Jared Goff. What that anecdote fails to capture is the confidence and growth Goff has displayed under a coach who believed in him and how meaningful relationships like that truly are for players.

Fisch highlights this when discussing how player relationships have illuminated the behind-the-scenes tampering. But until revenue-sharing allows for university involvement in paying players and a likely framework for issues of tampering within the contracts, college football teams are stuck in a system that takes away as much as it benefits.

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Maddy Hudak
MADDY HUDAK

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