SO BAD IT’ SG OOD
Missing in action: Transfer portal and bowl opt-outs
These days, college football players and coaches are running to new destinations earlier than usual, and the reality is that bowl season will never be the same.
Some of college’s most productive stars are moving all over in search of not just more playing time and a shot at the NFL draft but also for NIL money in many cases.
Look no further than ex-Ohio Bobcats quarterback Kurtis Rourke, who had a highly productive season before entering the transfer portal and committing Thursday to Indiana.
We saw Ohio move from slight one-point favorites in its Myrtle Beach Bowl meeting with Georgia Southern to 3.5-point underdogs thanks to the transfer portal’s nifty work.
But the chaos doesn’t end there, and if you bet early on the bowl games, your money lives and dies by player movement.
Take Georgia State, for example: RB Marcus Carroll is the seventh leading rusher in the country, putting up gaudy numbers on a weekly basis, accumulating 1,350 rushing yards and 13 touchdowns.
He entered the transfer portal alongside leading receiver Robert Lewis and top cornerback Bryquise Brown, putting the team in a really tough spot ahead of its bowl game opposite Utah State.
If you bet Georgia State -3.5, you can’t be too happy with these transfers and resulting line movement; Utah State is now favored by 1.5.
It’s impossible to look at bowl season the same way. As fans, we loved watching Johnny Manziel’s 2013 comeback against Duke in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. But the reality is that Manziel would never have played in that game if he was playing in the college ranks now.
Instead, he’d be preparing for the NFL draft with his agent or negotiating with other colleges for more NIL money.
And that has leaked into our pockets in the betting world as well as the casual viewer.