Josh Pate on Transfer Portal: ‘It’s Gonna Get Really Crazy in April’
The Transfer Portal has become a topic in college football that not a lot of folks like to talk about, and for good reason. For most teams, the portal brings more trepidation and anxiety than it does excitement. In a world run by NIL inducements and pay-for-play happening right out there in the open, it’s a dog-eat-dog world.
CBS Sports’ Josh Pate, who has been very vocal about his thoughts on the current state of the transfer portal, is warning everyone that they’d better buckle up because it’s about to get much worse.
As one of the biggest names in the media, Pate has made an unimaginable amount of connections. It is well ahead of the public in terms of the information circulating in college football circles.
Simply put, you haven’t seen anything yet.
“Let me just give you an idea of what’s happening on the college football streets right now. Everybody behind the scenes knows it’s gonna get really crazy in April,” Pate said during his latest episode of Late Kick. “So, what’s happening right now—I kid you not—I had someone walk me through the other day a specific position group at a major university out there. Not only were there kids on that team, in that position group that their coach knew, ‘he’s not going to be on my team after April 20th or 25th,’ but this group of coaches knew who they were going to backfill with. And the names that they’re going to backfill with are on other rosters, currently. That’s not an isolated example.”
That’s just the beginning of a conversation that Pate starts to peel back the curtain on just how insane the next month could be for college football programs across the country.
“There are gonna be some glaring examples of programs and teams that get victimized, and there are going to be some glaring examples of programs that reap the benefits of the victimization and some of you are going to love it because your team benefits. Most of you are going to hate it because you look at it and say, ‘Wholistically, this is terrible. This is not what college football should be.’ But, it’s necessary You’re right, it shouldn’t be that, but it’s necessary. Whatever has to happen for there to be quick change, it has to be jarring.”
Then, in typical Pate fashion, he uses a spot-on metaphor to explain why the upcoming month, which will certainly be a tough pill to swallow, is necessary for college football to evolve into the next phase, where we see a more settled model.
“It can’t be the pot of cold water that you toss the frog into and then slowly heat it up, because then he just boils to death,” Pate said. “But you boil the water and then toss the frog in, and all of a sudden, he jumps. He jumps into action. Why? Because he doesn’t want to boil to death. Similarly, you’re about to see an April that goes down in the history books for roster reconstruction and deconstruction.
“Four or five years from now, when we gotten ourselves into a more settled calendar, you’ll look back and you’ll wonder how anyone slept at night during this period of college football. You’ll also look back and say, ‘I hated this, this, this, and that at the time. But, who’s to say we would’ve gotten these changes if this, this, this, and that didn’t happen.'”
