Do we think that the portal will not be quite as busy and productive as past years since the COVID year has expired?
Yeah, there will be no (or at least far fewer; maybe a few people with a redshirt year on top of the COVID year?) super seniors and thus fewer people in the portal overall. But I'm guessing you'll see similar amounts of moment just with players who are (in aggregate) of lower quality. So some guys who in past years would have ended up in D2 will end up at a low major, some low majors guys ending up at a mid major, and some mid major guys ending up at high majors. Smaller labor pool for the same number of spots. Love that tight labor market!
Lower supply, equivalent demand. It's a recipe for more tampering.
No teams like Kentucky, who has six 5th year seniors…
Kentucky has seven such players. I've linked to Andrew Parrish's
2024-25 NCAA Scholarship Tracker a few times, and it comes in handy here. Just go by conference, find the team, and count the number of names in green to determine how many are on their last year of eligibility (grad students, super seniors, redshirt seniors, regular seniors, whatever).
Mark Pope's win on Tuesday reinforced the idea that putting together a team of experienced players entirely through the transfer portal can be very successful. When recruiting Acaden Lewis, he basically told him that he expects next year's team to have 5 returning players, 4 freshmen, and up to 4 incoming transfers.
So Kentucky will be a significant player in the portal, but there are others who will have even more spots to fill. Louisville, for example, has 10 names in green, though 2 of them (Aly Khalifa and Kobe Rodgers) are redshirting this year. So that's 8 open scholarships, and so far, Louisville has zero freshmen coming in.
Here are some power conference teams who, as of right now, have 4 or more known scholarship openings for next season (a quick calculation of the number of players with remaining eligibility on the Scholarship Tracker, plus the number of committed incoming freshmen from
Verbal Commits, all subtracted from 13).
8: Auburn, Louisville, USC
7: Nebraska, Oregon, Texas Tech
6: Arizona State, Miami, Minnesota, Ole Miss, Tennessee
5: Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, NC State, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, Utah, Villanova, West Virginia, Xavier
4: Cincinnati, Kansas State, Oklahoma, Texas, UCF, Washington