It\u2019s been four years since college athletes have been able to legally profit from their name, image, and likeness.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been less than 10 years since those same athletes could enter the NCAA\u2019s transfer portal without needing to redshirt an entire competitive season. Yet, it feels like so much of what transpires is still taking shape in real time, not just for the students who partake but also for the coaches, officials, and administrators who navigate it. <\/p>\n
College sports, specifically revenue-generating college sports, have become a year-over-year proposition for coaches to find and retain talent. That last part has become even harder given the trend of student-athletes initially recruited to big-time schools jumping ship after not receiving what they anticipated, often to smaller midmajors, and becoming big fish. <\/p>\n
Conversely, student-athletes who have outkicked their scholarships at a mid-major can enter the portal for a fresh start at a power program \u2014 and potentially a substantial payday. <\/p>\n
\u00bb READ MORE: Darris Nichols and his brother have one mission at La Salle: Make Explorers men\u2019s hoops a winner<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s an extremely time consuming process depending on what side of the ball you\u2019re on. <\/p>\n Coaches have retired as a result<\/a>. Administrators have stepped down, arguably unable to keep pace with the new realities of the industry; some of whom have spent the latter part of their lives involved in it<\/a>. <\/p>\n But who it\u2019s been fantastic for is the athlete. It\u2019s why, according to Front Office Sports, over 4,000 players across men\u2019s and women\u2019s college basketball programs entered the most recent transfer portal, representing the highest number of players in a single year in the history of the NCAA<\/a>. <\/p>\n One of those players is Truth Harris, La Salle\u2019s graduate guard, who followed the university\u2019s new head coach, Darris Nichols, after Nichols succeeded Big Five legend Fran Dunphy in March<\/a>. <\/p>\n For Harris, 23, his fresh start with the Explorers represented his third Division I program and his fifth school since 2020. <\/p>\n After his start at East Tennessee State, Harris, a Mt. Vernon, N.Y. native, who led Mount Vernon High School to a state title in 2017, spent two years at Pensacola State and Indian Hills Community College, both JUCO programs where he starred. It afforded Harris a position with Nichols at Radford ahead of the 2023 season \u2014 and he has been alongside him since, making the jump to Philadelphia for the first time earlier this year. <\/p>\n While Harris sees these moves as opportunities, there are some within college sports who view them as exploitation and a lack of control by governing bodies.<\/p>\n Harris, who noted that his move to La Salle was promised alongside a five-figure sum through NIL opportunities, is why many students like him see the portal as a better way to navigate a college career. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was always going to get to this eventually,\u201d said Harris in a sit-down with The Inquirer this summer. \u201cI feel like students do deserve the recognition, do deserve the money. As student-athletes, we do go through a lot. We push our limits. We have to get paid for that. So yeah, I think [the new reality of college sports is] right where it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: This La Salle triathlete competed in an Ironman world championship. She hopes it\u2019s the first of many.<\/a><\/p>\n Many of the top earners in the 2025-26 college basketball season would agree. The highest paid hooper, BYU guard AJ Dybantsa, is earning roughly $4.4 million this year, according to On3 NIL valuations<\/a>. In fact, according to the list, the top 10 earners in men\u2019s college basketball, all stand to make over $1 million this season. <\/p>\n Far from the days in which the guarantee of a college scholarship or a \u201cfull ride\u201d was the allure.<\/p>\n These days, that comes standard. <\/p>\n Student-athletes are guided by the promise of a payday, with the masses that continue to jump into NCAA\u2019s transfer portal serving as proof. <\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s not that hard, really\u2019<\/p>\n Instructions on how to to jump into the NCAA\u2019s transfer portal are readily available on the NCAA\u2019s website<\/a>. However, it\u2019s a process in which, once a player decides to jump, there\u2019s a bit of an unknown. But if you\u2019re a proven talent, according to Harris, it\u2019s pretty straightforward. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen you enter the transfer portal, you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d Harris said. \u201cIf we are saying if there\u2019s stress [involved], I would say that\u2019s the bad stress? But at the same time, when you start hearing from schools and hearing those schools out, it does ease you down a bit more.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hardest decision is picking the right school, picking the right option for you. And that all goes into [questions like] is the team good? What\u2019s the coaching like? What\u2019s their history, their culture? It\u2019s about making sure they want you for the right things, and you\u2019ll be a good fit there. But once you do it once, it\u2019s not that hard, really.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps what causes little concern is that for student-athletes freely moving from school to school, many are moving with general studies majors, or in Harris\u2019 case, chasing a master\u2019s in communications, a degree he noted as \u201ca well-known major that a lot of schools carry.\u201d<\/p>\n In Step 1 of the NCAA\u2019s guide to transferring schools, there\u2019s a line that reads: \u201cYour new school should help you satisfy both your academic and athletic goals.\u201d However, school graduation rates for athletes reflect the lack of emphasis on academics. <\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019ve opened up two different can of worms when we opened up the transfer portal and NIL at the same time, it became chaotic,\u201d said Nichols, who said that there\u2019s one proponent that\u2019s not being talked about enough, the fluctuating graduation rates for student-athletes and the impact it has on the schools being treated like a revolving door. <\/p>\n \u201cI think that if we\u2019re about student-athletes graduating, we should be focused on retention and doing what\u2019s best for both parties. Everybody\u2019s talking about the money situation, but to me, let\u2019s clean up the situation of these student-athletes transferring so much but making sure they still graduate.\u201d <\/p>\n However, according to the NCAA, Division I Academic Progress Rates<\/a>, known as APRs, a metric which is supposed to hold colleges and universities accountable for the academic performance of student-athletes, graduation rates hover around 83% as of the 2025 season \u2014 though that did see a four percent decline since last year. <\/p>\n \u201cI think that there are just some challenges people don\u2019t talk about,\u201d Nichols added. \u201cIf you\u2019re a player that\u2019s transferring every year, are all your credits rolling over, so you\u2019re actually eligible? Something as simple as uniforms, think about it: you bring in nine new players every year, you\u2019ve got to get nine new uniforms. And for people who say, \u2018Well, why don\u2019t you just not put their names on the back,\u2019 every one of them comes in different sizes and [a player] can be number 0 to 99.<\/p>\n \u201cSo it\u2019s not just about the cost of NIL for potential players, it\u2019s about operating costs, budgets, revenue. Everybody\u2019s talking about NIL, but there are the little things that go into all this change.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: La Salle\u2019s three-phase rebuild of its revived baseball program is now headed to second<\/a><\/p>\n Works both ways<\/p>\n Still, to ask Nichols, a former Division I star at West Virginia, whose playing days preceded NIL, players should be compensated. That\u2019s not the issue. The issue is the time coaches spend trying to field winning teams every season in what\u2019s essentially become a free-agent market. <\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re constantly trying to get kids to buy in,\u201d said Nichols. \u201cWhen I was playing, it was a buy-in for four years. And now it\u2019s buy-in for a year. Look, we\u2019re not in a position to try to hold anybody back. If you play here, you do well, and you want to go elsewhere, I get it. But as a staff, we do our utmost to just have honest conversations with [our players] about the new landscape of athletics and not try to hide behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible to hide when the data is so stark that most schools, especially mid-major schools, will see significant movement across their programs each year, specifically in revenue-generating sports like football and basketball. <\/p>\n