1/7/26
At this hour, Washington Huskies quarterback, Demond Williams is not in the transfer portal. Williams has asked Washington for his release into the transfer portal, after, according to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports, the quarterback signed a one-year revenue-sharing contract. Dellenger details that he’s prohibited from entering the transfer portal due to signing this contract. Reportedly, LSU is highly interested in Williams, despite the fact that former Arizona State quarterback Sam Leavitt, who is in the transfer portal, was seen last night at an LSU basketball game with newly hired head coach Lane Kiffin. Players who declare their intent to enter the transfer portal must be granted access to the portal by their school. In most cases, schools don’t blink twice at letting players enter the portal. The Williams case gets tricky due to the alleged contract signing and the language in the contract that the school and Williams reportedly agreed to.
There’s a large group of fans, media members, and others who believe NIL is the catalyst for this chaos in college sports. Yes, NIL is certainly a contribution to the problem, but players have been getting paid for decades in college sports. Now it’s legal, and all the dirty work that was being done surreptitiously is out in the open. NIL allows players to get paid and/or acquire benefits without the risk of penalty for themselves (i.e., Reggie Bush) or, like what happened to SMU football, having an entire program shut down.
The transfer portal is what’s really turning college athletics into an inextricable circus. Players hopping from school to school, without any rhyme or reason, and with no penalty, is a much larger issue. The old rule was that players could transfer, but they must sit out one full year before they could play. The issue with that was that coaches could, and still do, leave whenever they want, with no penalty, which left players in a bind after committing to something they were sold on before coaches blindly leave them in the dust.
The NCAA attempted to mitigate that issue with the transfer portal. The problem with that near sighting philosphy is that the NCAA didn’t think about greedy agents who would grossly take advantage of them. Agents are the other major catalyst to the absurd circus that’s going on in college athletics. They are working deals for these players to become globetrotters across Division I athletics, with no loyalty, penalty, or shame. Agents have become so powerful, but they are seldom talked about, because they aren’t in front of cameras. Most fans couldn’t name three agents involved in college athletics. They work behind the scenes to stir the pot of money-infused chaos and get off scot-free.
There’s also no oversight on college athletics. Sure, there’s a president of the NCAA and commissioners of conferences, but there isn’t a true governing body that’s attempting to control or slow down this avalanche of insanity. TV executives have put so much money into these conferences that some of the biggest games of the season aren’t in primetime, networks are fighting over what games they get to show, and due to the SEC’s affiliation with ESPN, there are conspiracy theories running amok on the internet, causing fans to question the integrity of who gets into the College Football Playoff. Should someone attempt to swoop in and garner control of college athletics, the Big Ten Conference and SEC would defect and create their own league. Those two conferences don’t want to relinquish an ounce of control and have no plans on doing so without some major kickback. Even then, it’s hard to put a price tag on control.
As for Demond Williams, Washington, LSU, his agent, and whoever else is involved, nothing will change. There will be an outcry for a short amount of time, but due to the social media short attention span sports society we live in, people will forget about this in two weeks when the next bright shiny object is flashed in front of them and distracts them from their current rage. Alumni will still donate to their schools. Fans will still buy tickets, food, and merchandise on Saturdays in the fall. Millions of people will watch the remainder of the College Football Playoff. TV executives will boast the number of people who tuned in, incognito agents will continue to work in the dark to shift players too and fro, and no one will have the authority to change it. The second agents, television networks, and/or big schools start to lose money, radical changes will come.
Until then, this ludicrous hamster wheel will continue to spin.
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