re: The one-time transfer rule for athletes in all sports has been approved by the NCAA

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Alabama has taken very few transfers under Saban, mainly because they just don't have room for them. Guys like Jake Coker and Landon Dickerson are rare exceptions (and ironically both transferred from FSU).

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Alabama and others will make room if they have to. This is going to crush G5 schools with under-recruited elite players who no longer have to decide whether sitting out is worth it to transfer if they want more exposure at a major P5. The best programs, like recruiting high school players, will be at the front of the line. This isn’t about Alabama specifically, but the power balance of college football that has been an issue for years. For all the pundits clamoring for G5s to have a fair shake, that shot just got more remote. Like I said, this only benefits elite players and elite programs but gives a false sense of hope for other players who will inevitably make very poor, misguided, and emotional decisions. The transfer rule saved immature kids from themselves more times than not.

Another by-product is obviously roster management with the signing rules currently in place. Let’s say a coach is fired/leaves and 10 guys enter the portal, the signing class falls apart, and normal attrition happens, how is a school even able to get back to 85 players if they aren’t allowed to sign 25 players in one cycle?

The portal alone is a mess with there being hundreds more kids in the portal than scholarships available. Adding this rule to the fold is going to result in a complete shite show of young, immature teenagers ruing their chance at a free education, when in reality the only thing people seem to consider is how the standing rule affected elite NFL prospects like Fields. No sports league has unbridled free agency like this.