LAD and Saw : Its all lies. I believe NONE of it.
“Oregon contacted five or six [current Buckeyes] to try to get them into the portal and transfer there,” our source said. “[Oregon] is ruthless and upfront with tampering. They are so desperate - it looks to me like they are just going down the rosters of big-time teams and picking out names to go after. Then they offer away above market price. They offered [Ohio State players] double their expected value.
ducks have to piss off everyone. waiting for the billboards to go up in columbus soon.
There are so many ways to contact a kid that this type of thing will continue. NCAA can put a big damper on it by reinstating the 1 yr transfer ban.
I have to smile. 🙂 You Trojans get so much satisfaction from stirring the pot these days and dissing on lil' Oregon. Your 1980s Trojan fan versions of yourselves would be so ashamed if they could see you now.....lol!
Read this about what's really happening from credible, albeit anonymous, sources...per Pete Nakos at on3.com
https://www.on3.com/news/how-tampering-is-impacting-college-football-transfer-portal/
When Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule announced earlier this month he was calling off the program’s spring game due to tampering, he cited that players landed opportunities to transfer and play elsewhere after last year’s scrimmage. But that’s only one form of tampering in college football.
Nowadays, agents are constantly shopping around lists of their players to coaches and NIL collectives. The lack of NCAA enforcement has allowed tampering to become a common thread in college football. Speaking with multiple sources, many believe if a school is not tampering, then they are doing themselves a disservice.
“If an agent signs our top three players, and we present our deal to them, and they think they’re their client is not getting paid fairly, then they just pick up the phone and call 10 other teams and send them to the highest bidder,” a Big Ten staffer told On3.
On3 spoke with personnel staffers, agents and NIL collectives across the Power Four to learn about how tampering has impacted college football and the transfer portal. Here’s the full breakdown:
How common is tampering in college football?
Big Ten Staffer 1: Nowadays, agents are calling you with a list of guys that are currently on rosters, and they’re saying, ‘Hey, here’s my list of 30 guys. Let me know if you’re interested in any of them.’ As much as tampering is a problem, just in college football in general, the agent side of things is the biggest issue in my opinion, and they’re just doing their jobs. But it makes it tough.
Big Ten Staffer 2: I don’t know anybody that doesn’t. Group of Five teams are doing it on shitty Group of Five teams. … There’s a whole league right above us that does it the right way, and we’re refusing to go to them for help.
Big 12 Staffer 1: Every day we’re dealing with it. If they had things in place where you didn’t need to tamper, I don’t think people would. People want to follow the rules, but they want to win more. And right now, if you’re not tampering you’re putting your program and university at a disadvantage to win games.
SEC NIL Collective: It’s one of the bigger problems, if not, probably one of the main problems that people don’t want to talk about, because everybody’s doing it. It’s unfortunate. With the way these agents have figured out the model and football having two portal windows. Having the two portal windows just exacerbates the problem even more. And these kids are constantly in play because of the multiple portal windows. It’s really nonstop, it’s year-round. The players have plausible deniability. The coaches have deniability because, ‘Oh, I didn’t talk to the kid.’ But you and I both know there’s always a middleman that facilitates that.
ACC NIL Collective: I’m already getting text messages. You know when you pull up ESPN and get the stat line? I probably get 10 to 15 of those a day. And it’s just like, ‘Do you guys have any interest in this kid? Hey, this kid will get in the spring portal. What would you pay them?’ Agents are just shopping. They’re hustling. It’s become part of the nature of college football at this point. If you’re not reaching out to agents, getting an idea of who they have, who might be moving, or who they’ve been talking to, then you’re not probably doing your job. Right now in the portal, you can sign your team to a new contract, but that doesn’t mean shit until you get through the spring.
Agent 1: You almost have to tamper A lot of these guys know where they’re going with a couple of weeks left in the season. People blame it on agents, but it’s the teams, too. To be a top-level school, you have to do it. That’s the only way to get ahead of things with this current model. It’s vital for teams to be successful. And if you’re not tampering, you’re going to lose. The only schools who are going to say that they don’t tamper are the ones who are sucking ass in the portal.
Are agents mainly driving tampering?
Big Ten Staffer 2: It’s ridiculous. I was asking our compliance guy, ‘Hey, if an agent reaches out to you before the kid is in the portal, is it legal or not legal to talk to them? No, it’s illegal.’ It’s illegal to talk to them if they’re an agent, and you’re not in the portal. Like, think about that. It’s fucking wild.
Big Ten NIL Collective: It doesn’t feel like there are actually rules around tampering, because it’s so common. It’s just pretty casual. There’s nothing that has actually dropped that can really govern it. There are just so many ways for the information to flow. It’s not even just agents, it’s family members, it’s teammates of guys, its high school coaches, 7-on-7. A lot of times the kid doesn’t even know the agent is shopping them around.
Big 12 Staffer 1: That’s the majority of it, that’s how everyone is doing it. The agents, you can’t do anything with them NCAA-wise. Everything these days is agents and high school coaches. But sometimes it’s not even the agent, it’s 7-on-7 guys. There’s no way to police it right now.
Agent 2: They do it through agents, which is the funniest part. If I have a close relationship with a general manager, they’ll go, ‘Hey, can you get in touch with this guy?’ I think the only fix is collective bargaining. Because right now, if you have guys on your roster that are being tampered with, you’re supposed to wait until the portal opens and everybody’s already got a spot because they’ve been tampered with. That makes no sense.
Big 12 Staffer 2: What’s interesting is there have been kids on agents’ lists who are well-established, well-paid guys at other schools. I always wonder if they know their agents are shopping for them. And these are established players.
How critical is tampering to winning in college football?
Big 12 Staffer 1: It’s just how you win these days. The NCAA has to put guys on multi-year contracts where it’s like NFL free agency. You know the length of everyone’s contract, who is coming up. If that is made public, people won’t have to tamper.
SEC NIL Collective: I would say that there’s probably not one kid that we signed in the portal this year that we didn’t know about prior to them going in the portal. They’re going to get an indication of interest. They’re going to get an idea of where the marketplace is. And really the last step in the process, before they decide where they’re going to go visit, is going in the portal. You would think that would be the first step in the process would be getting the portal and then we’ll figure it out. That’s the last formality before they decide where they’re going to go, is formally going in and where they’re going to go visit. If your first contact with the kid is after he goes in the portal, you don’t have a chance.
ACC NIL Collective: There’s so much money involved in this that it just creates limitless opportunities. Why wouldn’t you go out and feel what your market is? Or as an agent, why wouldn’t I shop these five kids that I have? Because if I get one guy at 10% of $500,000, that is a $50,000 payday.
What’s an example of dealing with a school tampering with one of your players?
Big Ten Staffer 1: We beat a team two years ago in our stadium, and three days later, two recruiting staff members from that team were direct messaging one of our top players who, he’s such a nice kid, he came in and asked, ‘Hey, do you want me to take this to compliance, or you guys want to handle it at this point?’ So I just called up that recruiting guy and say, ‘What are you doing, dude?’ To which he quickly says, ‘Well, hey, that wasn’t me.’ I was like, ‘I have the screenshots if you’d like me to share them with you.’
Big 12 Staffer 1: I mean, you have a high school coach facilitating a million-dollar deal because a program that the kid was on is only paying him $200,000, but you got an SEC team or Big Tem team give him five times that, give him $1 million. What high school school coach isn’t going to help his kid make another $800,000 and change his family’s life?
SEC NIL Collective: There was a quarterback who told his coach we offered seven figures this winter. They called us and asked if we offered that, and we had never heard of the kid. The kid was bullshitting.
ACC NIL Collective: One of my favorites is this offseason. This kid calls me and he’s like, ‘Hey, man, I’ve got $180,000 from another school in our conference.’ And I’m like, ‘You should take that right now, you shouldn’t even think about it. Like just hang up the phone and call them and take this.’ So I pick up the phone and call the school and say, ‘Hey, what are you guys at?’ And they ask me where we’re at. Turns out we were at half that, and they never offered $180,000, but the kid was telling them we had offered $180K for him to stay.
How often are you working with other schools to identify real dollar figures?
Big Ten Staffer 1: There were a few instances working through portal guys last year and then even a guy on our own roster where I just call the other GM and say, ‘Hey, man, what’s your offer?’ Because the hardest part is just trying to find out what’s real. That’s, that’s the difference between college and NFL. In the NFL, there’s a salary cap and free agency at certain times the of year. We have free agency every day.
SEC NIL Collective: Collectives and coaches in schools are sharing much more information than previously, which has helped police some of that. But you would have kids tell you anything. They would tell us, ‘Alabama offered me this, LSU offered me this or that.’ This portal season we sniffed out a large portion of that because the schools and collectives would talk to each other. Nine out of 10 kids tell us they have offers from other schools. They generally tell us what the number is. Six out of 10 times we’re able to fact-check that number and protect ourselves because of the information sharing.
Is money the bottom line? What’s the recipe for winning in this tampering era?
Big Ten Staffer 2: The most important thing is getting that kid on the visit first. You can make the decision. If you want them, close the deal. You don’t let them go. That’s the most important thing, and have the evaluations done beforehand. So if you’ve done your pre-portal list and you’re ready to go, and then they jump in the portal and you get the transcript, people are making the reservations. And they get in the portal at four o’clock and you’re flying them in here tomorrow. That’s the most important thing.
SEC NIL Collective: It’s really the only thing that matters now to these kids is the financial consideration. Assuming that your facilities are above mediocre and you’ve won a fair amount, it really comes down to the money.
ACC NIL Collective: There’s a pandemic in college football right now that basically, guys are full of it, man. Guys are in the locker room saying, ‘Well, if you don’t pay more, I’m just going to opt-out.’ Or ‘If they don’t get me a car in my contract, I’m just going to opt-out. That’s not how this works.
Not sure which part of this amuses me more. This is like el chapo calling al Capone a bad guy
Serves Ohio St and the rest of the Big for inviting Oregon in....very short sighted when the Nike Corporation is hell bent to do whatever it takes to put a trophy in that empty case..
The ole , according to my source. lol
😆