Over the weekend I was able to chat with one of my former players who is currently in the portal out of Old Dominion. His reason was simply to get back closer to home, and really just to try to get in a better situation for him, he's not bag chasing or anything like that. He played Safety/CB for me a few years back and is deciding to leave ODU this year. Good player, great ball skills, but just mediocre size and speed for P5 football..... my guess is he ends up at App State, Coastal, Ga Southern, Ga State or something similar.
He said he has been in contact with a few larger schools, but he said as much as it seems glorified by the high profile athletes the portal is just as much a nightmare for the Non-Star Athletes. He said the biggest thing he is noticing is almost every school now is leading with financials now instead of what the field looks like for a player. Believe it or not there are still guys that are playing simply because they love the game and just want time on the field. He was saying especially at these smaller schools he wished there were more coaches that took the loyalty approach to current players.
They had a kid that came right in from Virginia Tech was promised a certain role from the NIL perspective and the position coaches/coordinator wasn't even aware of this and it apparently caused a huge behind the scenes problem with a receiver coming over and basically was promised a starting spot without half of the staff even knowing what was happening. He said "you would be shocked at what is going on at the Group of schools and smaller, he said it is absolute chaos.
You can have a guy next to you in the weight room or locker room on Monday and one phone call happens and they are gone by Tuesday morning. He said the ODU staff was pretty good at keeping things as controlled as possible but there is not a good way to handle it on that level.
They had a guy on the team two weeks ago that was at team meetings around 11:00am and was a no-show at practice about 3 hours later, but instead on his way back home with "portal intentions"
We as Clemson fans see it from a high-level Point of view of going after these type players, but i'll be the first to admit I haven't thought about what it looks like sitting in the ODU locker room or staff POV at those schools. So it's always good when you get to catch up with any player that you coached but getting that perspective from a player going through it currently was really interesting.
He said he has been in contact with a few larger schools, but he said as much as it seems glorified by the high profile athletes the portal is just as much a nightmare for the Non-Star Athletes. He said the biggest thing he is noticing is almost every school now is leading with financials now instead of what the field looks like for a player. Believe it or not there are still guys that are playing simply because they love the game and just want time on the field. He was saying especially at these smaller schools he wished there were more coaches that took the loyalty approach to current players.
They had a kid that came right in from Virginia Tech was promised a certain role from the NIL perspective and the position coaches/coordinator wasn't even aware of this and it apparently caused a huge behind the scenes problem with a receiver coming over and basically was promised a starting spot without half of the staff even knowing what was happening. He said "you would be shocked at what is going on at the Group of schools and smaller, he said it is absolute chaos.
You can have a guy next to you in the weight room or locker room on Monday and one phone call happens and they are gone by Tuesday morning. He said the ODU staff was pretty good at keeping things as controlled as possible but there is not a good way to handle it on that level.
They had a guy on the team two weeks ago that was at team meetings around 11:00am and was a no-show at practice about 3 hours later, but instead on his way back home with "portal intentions"
We as Clemson fans see it from a high-level Point of view of going after these type players, but i'll be the first to admit I haven't thought about what it looks like sitting in the ODU locker room or staff POV at those schools. So it's always good when you get to catch up with any player that you coached but getting that perspective from a player going through it currently was really interesting.
