TAMPA, Fla. — There are myriad ways the NCAA transfer portal has altered the fabric of college sports. Players’ ability to freely move from school to school has given them agency like never before and changed the way rosters are built.
But one unintended consequence of the portal, at least for college basketball, is its effect on postseason preparation.
The winter transfer window for women’s basketball opened on March 25 and will remain open until April 23. This means that transfer season and tournament season effectively run simultaneously, forcing head coaches who would normally be locked in on the postseason to also devote time to recruiting portal players, retaining staff members and keeping players from jumping ship.
“So now you have assistant coaches leaving in the middle of the tournament,” UCLA head coach Cori Close said. “On top of everything else we’re doing, I have people calling about our coaches and are they interested in jobs and things like that.”
Watch women’s Final Four on Fubo (free trial)
The transfer portal, rise of NIL and a host of other fundamental changes have made the job of a college basketball head coach more demanding than ever. Many programs have, in an effort to take some of the load off the head coach’s plate, created general manager-type roles that previously only existed in the pro game.
“It’s necessary,” South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley said. “I don’t know if we’ll call it (general manager), but it will be some of the duties of a GM. I think it’s a lot of money in the space. It’s a lot of moving parts that we need somebody singularly focused on that movement and the ways we need to navigate in that space. If we’re here at a Final Four, the GM can be taking care of some of the stuff that we have to take on now.”
But even the creation of a separate general manager position doesn’t exactly remedy the issue that players and coaches are free to move schools during what should be the season’s most pivotal time.
“I do think the whole thing about how it affected the coaching carousel, I think that’s worth a second look because that has been a major distraction, and when that’s a distraction it affects the student-athlete experience,” Close said. “I think that’s something we have to take a look at.”
Women’s Final Four schedule
South Carolina vs. Texas, 7 p.m. Friday | ESPN
UConn vs. UCLA, 9:30 p.m. Friday | ESPN
Bo Underwood is a student in the University of Georgia’s Sports Media Certificate program.