HARRISONBURG — Russ Huesman couldn’t have summed up a coach’s thought on the transfer portal any better.
The belief was echoed repeatedly by his peers.
“I’m not totally in favor of it,” the third-year headman at Richmond said. “But I can’t be a hypocrite and say we’re not using it.”
The Spiders, like James Madison and most teams in the Colonial Athletic Association, are taking advantage of the NCAA’s new transparent toy — a database full of athletes looking for new schools to call home.
As of this week, league programs have already added to their rosters or secured commitments from 33 transfer players. Richmond and Stony Brook lead the way with five imports while Albany, Delaware, Towson and William & Mary have picked up four transfers apiece. JMU and Maine have added three and Elon grabbed one.
“We lost some kids that left the program here and chose to transfer elsewhere,” Huesman said. “Which I’m sure a lot of people had the same issue throughout the country. So we were not different than everyone else. But when you’re losing a grad student, a fifth-year guy, it’s hard to say, ‘Oh we’ll replace him with a freshman.’ You have to replace older guys with older guys and that’s where you’ve got to take advantage of it when you are losing people.
“I hope next year all our kids come back for their fifth year. I hope we don’t lose anybody and that we don’t have to go into the portal, but the way it happened this year, we needed to.”
Dejon Brissett, a former All-CAA first-team receiver for Richmond, opted to explore options and eventually transferred to Virginia. Another former Richmond wide receiver, Cortrelle Simpson, declared for the draft early instead of playing his final season at the school so, like Huesman said, he replaced Brissett and Simpson with veterans by signing former Northwestern wide receiver Charlie Fessler and former Duke wide receiver Keyston Fuller.
And CAA teams sought experienced receivers more than any other position this offseason.
Nine of the 33 transfers to land with a program in the Colonial are wide outs, including Brandon Polk (Penn State) and Dillon Spalding (West Virginia), who joined JMU, and Brandon Benson (SMU) and Jean Constant (Bryant), who went to Stony Brook.
“I guess the part I don’t like about the portal is I had to dedicate a full-time person just to manage it to be able to be successful at it,” Stony Brook coach Chuck Priore said. “I think there are some repercussions that can come from it in a negative way and we haven’t lost players because of it, personally, so that’s the good part.
“But it was developed for the kids, and I don’t think it’s really reaching the correct goal for the kids. A lot of kids went on there thinking they were going to find something, and then they haven’t found anything, but they lost what they had.”
There are athletes who played in the CAA last year and thought by entering the portal they could find a better opportunity whether it was a level up in the FBS or more playing time elsewhere in the FCS.
And that’s what Dukes coach Curt Cignetti said he doesn’t like.
“I’m not a fan and I don’t think most coaches are,” Cignetti said. “I’ll be honest with you, I think there are too many guys that jump out as soon as it gets a little tough and don’t fight through adversity.
“I think it’s one of the great things about athletics is that it teaches people to fight through adversity. In life, things aren’t always going to go your way, but if you’re persistent and you stick to it, things have a tendency to work out in your favor. And what I don’t like about the portal is guys may be a little quick on the trigger to jump out of there and or to throw themselves on the portal to see what they can attract and then make a decision in two weeks whether they’re going to stay on the portal or jump back. I think we’re sending the wrong message to kids.”
