Chasing The Green Of The College Experience…

We have always heard the phrase that “hope springs eternal,” as the air gets warmer, the grass gets greener, in most places the future beckons brightly, we tend to get more excited and hopefully interested in what lies around the corner.

Maybe that’s why the spring transfer window in college athletics opened this week. (Well maybe not, maybe it’s because the NCAA Tournament just ended but I digress).

This week according to reports, literally thousands of athletes, men and women, told their current place of employment…a college or university…that they were moving on to find a place with more opportunity, sometimes more cash, sometimes more promises, than what they currently have. For the best of the best…that two or three percent in men’s and women’s basketball especially…that will bring amazing new opportunity and returns, as we saw at the Final Four, where for the first time, the starters the winning school…Michigan…were all transfers from elsewhere.

It doesn’t make it right or wrong, it just makes it different, and credit Dusty May and his staff for getting his team focused and playing at such a high level that they won the title.

They are the best of the best, and the system worked. However for the literally thousands of others who think that its better elsewhere, that the worry lies, and while most of the stories of broken promises and unfulfilled expectations and hope for future employment will take some time to surface, they are real.

The mad spring scramble for those who choose to leave the school they are in also has it’s somewhat unintentional consequences, ones which I witnessed first hand while teaching at Fordham last spring. I had no men’s basketball players in class, but did have 13 athletes…football, baseball, women’s basketball, track etc…and when the spring portal opened 10 of the 13 decided that Fordham for whatever reason was not for them and started the process of going elsewhere. With that came missed classes, lackluster assignments, and a literal withdrawal from what they had started academically so they could hit the road to find what’s next. Was it discouraging to me that these engaged students were now more disengaged as they pursued elsewhere on class time? Yes. My take was there was a lack of commitment to finish what was started…really counter to what most coaches preach…but the reality was there was a no looking back attitude and an urgent rush to now find a next fit once they made up their mind. It brought on a new pressure for the group, and academics and commitment on projects? All pretty much went away.

It’s one of the reasons why I decided not to teach this spring. I love the athletes and the stories and being around young people, but to drop everything to chase something new works, hopefully for them, but didn’t for me and it became a distraction to the others in class that wasn’t needed.

Now there are many who are in athletics today who are adjusting to the unpredictable world they are now in. This past week I spoke to over a half dozen coaches and administrators at schools of all sizes who are trying to make the new system work, and hold no grudges for those moving on. Some worry about what these young people will do for careers down the line, most just accept and try to reshuffle the deck.

 Spring is certainly a time of new discovery, and young people have the world to rightfully experience. However sometimes that green grass miles away can turn out to be weeds. Not exactly the solution that was hoped for.

Good luck to all.