Swanson: Winning is hard, keeping a college team together is harder
I have so many questions.
Including, sure: Does it mean I’m hopelessly out of touch that I’m wondering whether the transfer portal and the chaotic new dimension it’s brought to college sports is really all that great?
On the whole, in the long run, is it crazy to think that having 2,100 men’s basketball players in the portal last season, and 1,367 women’s players this year (as of Monday morning) could be a bit much? And by a bit, I mean a colossally substantial level of much.
Do I just not get it? Is this my most antiquated, old-fashioned take, that there’s value in long-term commitment? That I’d like to see people see things through, unless, of course, things are truly untenable? Or unless the pay hike is truly that significant?
Am I being old-fashioned? Or maybe we are, because maybe you’re among the new women’s basketball fans who asked me, “What’s going on at UCLA and USC?” in the week since women’s college basketball season ended and women’s college basketball free agency got the floor to itself.
Have you wondered what these coaches who respectively led their teams to the Final Four and Elite Eight, just steps from a national championship, are doing … wrong?
How could the Bruins make history and then lose all four members of their freshman class and two key rotation players – Londynn Jones and Janiah Barker – off a team that finished 34-3?
And the Trojans? Even without the injured JuJu Watkins, they gave eventual champ UConn a game, and then almost immediately had four players, including two heavily utilized freshman – Avery Howell and Kayleigh Heckel – hit the portal while people were just starting to process the end of a 31-4 season?
If that feels like a major exodus, know that across the country, On3 Sports’ Talia Goodman – the Shams Charania of women’s college hoops – counted more than 60 women’s programs that have lost at least seven players to the portal.
Some big names appeared in the portal, former Notre Dame standout Olivia Miles (now of TCU) and South Carolina’s MiLaysia Fulwiley among them. But mostly it’s a revolving door of role players who want something else, or more, or different. And those roster spots will be filled by whom? By temp workers? Or by stars in those roles, increasingly rare players who realize the WNBA teams that drafted Monday night tend to keep around players who impact winning in not-so-obvious ways?
Winning is hard. Keeping a team together might be harder. Even here, at high-profile programs at great schools in an amazing city with wonderful weather and ready marketing opportunities (Chipotle and adidas leap to mind), UCLA and USC couldn’t keep a lid on their rosters. That’s wild, though, no?
Just kids these days? Or, perhaps, kids any days – if kids playing NCAA sports in olden times (pre-2021) would have been free, without having to deal with what was essentially a one-year non-compete clause, to try on different uniforms. To experience different places, to go and try to find their true selves over there, over here, or to click their heels three times and wish themselves closer to home.
After all, no rule was ever in place to stop coaches from doing that, right? Or, for that matter, non-athletic regular people who wanted to switch majors or schools or give themselves a gap year just because. Is it different when a team is counting on you? Isn’t it?
Or is it mostly all about the money, anyway? I kind of hope it’s the money; that is the ultimate driver in pro sports, right? We accept that, don’t we? That it’s not personal, just business? That owners most willing to spend often have the best teams? That’s why agents are around, to get athletes the most money – though I’m curious how much consideration agents give to the academic major a transferring collegian was pursuing at the old place?
No, you couldn’t be mad at women’s basketball players for chasing newly available paydays, could you? You could, however, wonder how often the bag is actually as heavy as a hooper hoped.
This is all so much more opaque than NBA free agency, which at least allows fans to play general manager, to pretend they’re piecing together teams with max-level deals as well as the veteran’s minimums and mid-level exemptions …
Ah, the NBA’s annual frenzied summertime soap opera that has driven so much interest it seems to have sapped the public’s appetite for the actual sport. Don’t you see it? All this player flight turning out to be a great way to keep people tuned into college hoops in the offseason – pay no attention to everyone it’s turning off.
Do you agree, though, that the greatest accelerant here is likely the oldest one in the book? More minutes? More shots? Higher usage? Or maybe, more freedom? A different style – personally, tactically? And who doubts that those sorts of creative differences or competing desires can be mutual – if they’re not one-sided, on either side?
And, of course, it’s impossible not to question how much of this is fueled by social media? Is this a contagion created by peer pressure, by wanting not just to see if the grass is greener, not just to be courted, but to be part of the conversation?
To want to be able to let the world know that you, too, are in demand by posting one of those form-letter-feeling rejection speeches that are heavy on reflection and heartfelt gratitude, but light on wanting to win at the next stop, wherever that is? You know, that old standby – “just wanna win” – that pro athletes usually fell back on when they signed a super-lucrative new deal with the highest bidder?
Maybe winning isn’t everything? Or maybe it’s different things to different people?
I don’t know, I’m just asking.