Welter: With the transfer portal, don't hate the player, hate the game

The transfer portal officially opens Monday. NC State quarterback MJ Morris one of dozens to say he's going in. Morris has been called a quitter by State fans after he benched himself to preserve his red shirt after going 3-1 as a starter.  I say don't hate the player, hate the game.

Morris and his family made a business decision, even if they underestimated the human cost.

"No one said he is leaving the program," Eddie Morris, MJ's father told WRAL's Brian Murphy in November. "Nobody said he is leaving the program. If he would have left the program, he would have left in January and he would have left in May. He had plenty of options."

NC State QB Morris to redshirt, not leaving the program

Morris and his father only know if they truly believed that stance at the time. Even if they did, it's hard to imagine coming back as a team's starter when you put yourself over the team like that. Especially a Dave Doeren led team.

“I was surprised by that because he was our starter and I really didn’t expect that, for a starting player to want to sit back down,” Doeren told reporters at the time.

Ironically it was another transfer that Doeren turned back to, Brennan Armstrong. Armstrong led the Wolfpack to a 5-0 finish, arguably the best coaching job of Doeren's career.

“You can fight or you can run,” Doeren said. “I love to fight. And so does Brennan. This team has proven that, that they are fighters.”

For most of these quarterbacks you get paid more to leave than to stay. Over 50% of starting quarterbacks in FBS this season were transfers.  That number is only going to grow.  DJ Uiagalelei transferred to Oregon State from Clemson last year. Now he's in the portal again as a graduate transfer. Other notable name's include Texas A&M's Max Johnson who is already committed to UNC (who previously transferred from LSU), and Duke's Riley Leonard, who announced he was leaving Duke after head coach Mike Elko took the head coaching job in College Station.

Leonard is an interesting case, because even if Elko had stayed he would have had a lot of lucrative offers. It would have been a similar situation to UNC's Drake Maye who was rumored to have a $5 million offer last December.

"Drake got offered a lot of money to go to different schools and it's tampering," UNC head coach Mack Brown said in a Dec. 19, 2022 press conference. "It's one hundred percent tampering, but he got offered money. He decided to stay."

I talked to Maye's parents Mark and Aimee before the Holiday Bowl last year in San Diego. They told me the offers were just rumors to them too.

"Drake never entered the portal," Mark said. "We don't really even know what was out there to be honest with you."

"There was obviously rumors," Aimee said. "All we heard was from like friends of ours 'oh I heard this', it was never any concrete thing from any specific sources."

Drake Maye's parents talk growing up a Tar Heel, NIL and transfer rumors

Maye had a unique situation being from Charlotte, his father played QB at UNC and his brother Luke was part of Carolina basketball's 2017 national championship team. That's a lot to walk away from, but if he had say transferred to Alabama (where he originally committed coming out of high school) he would have gotten paid more NIL money and would most likely be a Heisman front runner right now and competing for a national championship. It would have been hard to blame him if he decided to leave.

NIL is a very American idea. I think we all agreed college athletes should be able to earn what they are worth in a free market, but in our economy we do have guard rails and regulations. In the movie Wall Street Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, says "greed is good," but the subtext is that greed will destroy you. You could say, "Fan interest and engagement has never been higher!" That's probably true, but I don't think that this is what any of us, even the players, really want.  Sure the money is great, but is being forced to move, start over, leave friends, teammates and betray fans isn't exactly an enviable position.

Other than his family ties to UNC, Maye also had an all but guaranteed NFL future. That's a luxury that someone like Morris doesn't have. For Morris and a lot of these players in the transfer portal, this might be their only chance to make this kind of money ever again.  Morris preserved his red shirt, what he really did is maximize his earning potential.

NIL was supposed to be about allowing players to make money off their Instagram, sign autographs, have their likeness in a video game. Remember Donald De La Haye? He was the UCF kicker who got suspended for the 2017 season for running a profitable Youtube channel. Any reasonable person could see that was not right. What NIL has evolved into is collectives essentially negotiating salaries for players based off donations and pledges they've received from boosters and local businesses.

Doeren received some back lash by national writers when he solicited NIL donations after the Wolfpack beat UNC.

"For all you folks that want us to keep winning, I would tell you to get on Savage Wolves, find that link. I’d love to see 5,000 people donate $1,000 to our NIL and get us to a point where we can recruit, retain and develop and have a program in the NIL world where the guys on our roster are able to benefit from that," Doeren said.

NC State true freshman receiver Kevin Concepcion had just scored two touchdowns on 186 total yards. The Wolfpack had hit a home run in recruiting, but now we've been trained to think if he's that good he's going to leave for more money in the SEC. Doeren's plea worked. The Savage Wolves announced that Concepcion had been "signed" three days later.

If we are just referring to players as being "signed", we might as well just get fully enforceable contracts that are actually administered and paid for by the schools. What's the point in signing someone if they can just leave the next year. You also hear stories of player's NIL deals not even being honored.

There's a goldfish effect happening here. This NIL monster is going to grow and evolve as much and as fast as is legally possible. Right now there's no tank.  Triangle coaches have all called for federal regulation on NIL, currently laws vary from state to state.

"We need a standard," Mack Brown said back at the Pigskin Preview in Cary. "But if we get it, where it's a national standard and some equality across our game again, I think it'll be really good and probably be the best situation for kids we've ever had."

I agree, the athletes should get paid, but I think it's important to remember the fans should have a say in what they are watching too. There's no intrinsic value to throwing a football. It's only worth something if people care enough to watch.  The players are just doing what's in their best interest, but musical chair quarterbacks isn't in the best interest of the sport.  It's the wild west out there and it's no country for old men.