The long term impact of NIL and transfer portal on high school recruiting?

Every time a kid transfer there’s avoid left at the school he departed from. That’s good for HS kids. The number of scholarships available across all of college football is not changing, so transfer portal or not, high school kids will have a place. If NIL keeps kits in school longer, that could impact high school recruiting. Not sure we’ve seen that yet.

I mean the math didn’t change. It still takes the same number of kids to populate all the teams. There’s still the same number of offers out there for hs kids. It my be harder to be d1 power 5 but there no fewer spots overall.

some really good players will slip through the cracks and sign d2 and naia

then theyll ball out at that level, have college film, and transfer up

or theyll spend their college years at a smaller school, such is life

This is a rich get richer system. A couple of observations:

Programs that don't have the money to pay out the NIL deals are going to lose players to schools who offer more. Especially when they don't have to sit out a year.

Schools that traditionally compete by getting 2 and 3 star athletes and develop them are going to see these players walk right after they blossom. These schools will become the "minor leagues" for big time SEC and Big 10 programs.

Money is going to be a problem. Players will be jealous. If you are a recruit and you are making $5k/month and another recruit is making 5 times that, even though you are starting ahead of the guy making more, then that will cause a problem.

On the positive side, day 2 and day 3 draftees may stay 4 years because the NFL won't be much of a pay cut for some of these guys.

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Think about it…every offer made to someone in the transfer portal is an offer that previously would have gone to a high school recruit.

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This is not entirely true, since the initial counter limit (25/year) went away. In fact you could make the argument that the transfer portal era actually opens up more spots for HS recruits.

Here’s how that works:
1. Teams no longer have the 25/year initial counter limit. They can give out as many new scholarships as they want, as long as they stay under the total cap of 85 scholarships.
2. Every transfer fills a scholarship spot at one school, but also opens a scholarship spot at another school.
3. That means that if every player who enters the portal finds a home at the D1 level, it’s a wash. Total scholarships taken up by existing D1 players would remain unchanged.
4. However, the reality is that not every player in the portal finds a home. Some players will end up quitting football. Others will wind up playing at a lower level.
5. The net result is that total scholarships actually decrease, which means there are more openings for HS players.

The other factor is that the old 25/year initial counter limit meant that not every school would maintain 85 scholarships. If you had more than 25 players leaving (due to graduation, early entrants to the draft, dismissals, transfers, etc.) you previously could not fill that entire void with HS players or incoming transfers. A lot of schools would award those remaining scholarships to walk ons just to avoid wasting them. Now you can give those remaining scholarships to HS players or transfers, which again means more spots for incoming players.

Numbers are still a little wonky because of the free COVID year. It will be 2025-2026 before we see things finally stabilize on that front, as that’s when there will no longer be 5th year starters or 6th year players on rosters.

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Nil wasn’t suppose to turn into highest bidder to go or stay at a school

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Stevie Wonder could see what this was going to become.