Florida Gators: Both Dan Mullen and Mike White Will Be Active In the Transfer Portal
- Franz Beard
- Apr 2, 2021
- 11 min read
“The grass is always greener over the septic tank” – Erma Bombeck
As of Thursday morning, more than 1,000 Division I basketball players including four Florida Gators had placed their name in the NCAA transfer portal. Over on the football side, the numbers are nearly as staggering and they include eleven Gators. And this is BEFORE the NCAA enacts legislation that will give every Division I athlete one free transfer without the one-year sit out penalty or the Supreme Court decides a name, image and likeness case that could add a pay for play element to college sports that doesn’t exist right now.
The basketball portal includes Gators Noah Locke, Omar Payne, Ques Glover and Osayi Osifo, all of whom have made their decision to leave in the last seven days. At least one more is expected to take the plunge and transfer out. So far, none of them have found their other side of the hill where the grass is greener.
In the last three days, Gators T.J. Moore and Jahari Rogers have put their name in the football transfer portal joining Iverson Clement, Jaylin Jackson, Jesiah Pierre, Chester Kimbrough, James Houston, Quincy Lenton, C.J. McWilliams, Jacob Finn and Zack Sessa. Moore, Rogers, Clement, Pierre, Kimbrough, Houston, Lenton and McWilliams were scholarship athletes while Jackson, Finn and Sessa were walk-ons. Clement (Temple), Pierre (Texas Tech), Kimbrough (Michigan State) and McWilliams (Purdue) all know where they will be playing football next year while the others are still searching and hoping to find a new place to play.
Since the advent of college sports, transfers have been part of the landscape, almost always for one of the following four reasons: (1) playing time; (2) bad fit with the coaching staff; (3) the need to be closer to home; and (4) academics. Until recently, NCAA requirement to sit a year in football, basketball, baseball, softball and hockey for years acted as a preventative measure that forced kids to think carefully before leaving instead of acting impulsively but things have been changing in the last 15 years.
Back in 2006, the NCAA began chipping away at its own transfer rules by allowing kids who had already graduated to transfer without a sit out penalty. One of the first to take advantage of that rule was corner Ryan Smith, who intercepted eight passes, made second-team All-America and without whom Urban Meyer and the Gators probably don’t win the 2006 national championship in football. Mike White has used the grad transfer rules to his benefit to bring in Canyon Barry (from Charleston), Egor Koulechov (from Rice) and Kerry Blackshear Jr. (from Virginia Tech), all of whom had an immediate impact on the Florida basketball program. Without Barry, White and the Gators don’t make the 2017 Elite Eight. Offensive lineman Stewart Reese used the graduate rule to transfer to UF in 2020 from Mississippi State. He will use an NCAA ruling that gives every player on a 2020 roster an extra year to start on the UF offensive line for a second straight year.
Realizing that some underclassmen with legitimate concerns shouldn’t be penalized for transferring out, the NCAA implemented a waiver process several years ago that allowed a kid to submit a petition with all the reasons he or she should be granted immediate eligibility. Dan Mullen got immediate help from the waiver process in 2018 when wide receivers Van Jefferson (Ole Miss) and Trevon Grimes (Ohio State) were allowed to play without sitting a year. Jefferson was cleared because Ole Miss went on NCAA probation that included a one-year bowl ban. Grimes, who is from Fort Lauderdale, needed to be closer to home for family reasons. Jefferson parlayed two years at Florida in the Mullen offense into a second round draft choice by the Los Angeles Rams. Grimes is likely to be a third or fourth round choice in the NFL Draft later this month. Former 5-star running back and DeLand native Lorenzo Lingard, who expects to have a prominent role in the 2021 offense, got a transfer waiver last year when he left Miami and wide receiver and Winter Park native Jordan Pouncey got a 2020 waiver when he transferred from Texas.
Colin Castleton, who spent his first two basketball seasons at Michigan, got a transfer waiver that made him immediately eligible at Florida prior to the 2020-21 season. Originally from DeLand and a prep star at Daytona Beach Father Lopez, Castleton was a second team All-SEC selection.
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For years transfers were considered almost a last resort.
“It was so rare when I played,” recalls Bill Koss, the former Gator basketball player for Norm Sloan back in the 1960s. “A lot of guys wanted to transfer but stuck it out back in those days.”
Former Gator star Dick Tomlinson, a Koss teammate, and Sloan rarely saw eye-to-eye. The threat of the transfer was always there just as the dislike and resentment was always smoldering beneath the surface, but Tomlinson stayed and averaged 12.0 points and 7.3 rebounds for his Florida career. Richard Peek, the first 7-footer in Florida history, transferred out after the 1964 season and Todd Lalich left partway through the 1968-69 season.
There was a time when North Carolina basketball seemed immune from transfers but that has changed. Roy Williams, who retired Thursday after winning three national championships, had to be stunned when 7-1 Walker Kessler elected to transfer out after a freshman season that had future first round draft pick written all over it. There is little doubt that Kessler’s decision to transfer was one of the reasons why Williams chose to retire.
Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim recalls a time when nobody transferred out of North Carolina.
“I remember recruiting against North Carolina (when) they had 13 (high school) All-Americans there,” Boeheim told Mike Beradino at Forbes Magazine. “Thirteen! And not one of them ever left and only seven or eight of them played.”
That was then. This is now when even blueblood basketball programs like North Carolina and college football’s most dominant power Alabama see kids who were All-Americans in high school transferring out on a regular basis. That couldn’t have happened in the past. It’s reminiscent of the 1970s when Curt Flood challenged Major League Baseball and won, opening the door for free agency. The NCAA has tried to fend off what amounts to free agency in its sports by allowing change to come gradually but now, as we enter an era when athletes are feeling empowered, gradual is giving way to rules that are going to change things forever.
What seems like a flood at this point may seem like a trickle in the months ahead. The dam is on the verge of bursting and it no longer is a matter of if, but when the flood begins.
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You won’t find a coach that will admit it publicly, but the transfer rules in place now are quite beneficial when it comes to roster management. Scholarships are no longer four-year agreements but a one-year deal that has to be renewed. Rather than take the long-range approach toward development, coaches can simply bury kids who aren’t making sufficient progress on the depth chart. Faced with the possibility of a five-year career spent spinning their wheels while new talent is brought in either through the traditional high school and juco route or through the transfer portals, kids are getting the hint and transferring to a new school where they can get a fresh start. You don’t hear a lot of coaches complaining when kids leave.
Not every kid that goes the transfer route finds a new landing spot. Back in February, Keith Grabowski of the “Coach and Coordinator” podcast reported that only 28 percent of the football players who transferred out in January had a scholarship and a place to relocate. That percentage is probably going to drop even more in the next few weeks when the rules change.
Many kids who transferred out in 2019 never got an eligibility waiver that allowed them to play immediately. The Chicago Tribune reported in May of 2019 that only 68 percent of the kids who applied for a waiver were approved. Some, like Brenton Cox, a former 5-star recruit who transferred to Florida from Georgia in 2019, had to spend a year toiling on the scout team while waiting for a waiver that never arrived.
Waivers will be a thing of the past once the new legislation is approved but once it kicks in there will be more transfers than ever before, which also means more kids than ever before who leave will find themselves wishing they had stayed put. For the most part, the coaches won’t be complaining. They will be able to trim their rosters to manageable levels and schools in the power conferences, in particular, will be able to cherry pick from the transfer portal as well as having open scholarships they can offer to high school kids.
Like it or not, the new legislation is going to make it so the rich get richer. Kessler, for example, is expected to transfer to Gonzaga, the odds-on favorite to win the NCAA basketball championship and finish as the first unbeaten team since 1976 Indiana. Alabama lost a quarterback, two wide receivers, a running back and two offensive linemen who could all be selected in the NFL Draft later this month. Once spring practice concludes in Tuscaloosa, Nick Saban may decide he can best fill some of those holes by dipping into the transfer portal to pick and choose the best available. If Alabama comes calling, how many will be able to say no?
Transfers will impact Florida’s football team in the fall. In addition to Lingard, who showed game breaking ability in the spring after an injury-filled 2020, the Gators will benefit from the additions of former 5-star running back Demarkcus Bowman (from Clemson), defensive tackles Antonio Shelton (from Penn State) and Daquan Newkirk (Auburn), edge rusher Dylan Meeks (Akron) and placekicker Jace Christmann (Mississippi State). Shelton, Newkirk, Meeks and Christmann are graduate transfers. Neither Meeks nor Christmann will count against the scholarship limitations. The new legislation will make Bowman immediately eligible with four years of eligibility remaining.
Mullen still has two open scholarships that he plans to use in the transfer portal. There are concerns on the offensive line, particularly at right tackle so that’s one place he will be looking for a quality transfer who can step in and start immediately. Other perceived needs are at wide receiver and in the secondary. Because of his success in the portal, Mullen has a stack of paperwork on kids who have already reached out. More players will announce they are leaving for a new destination when spring football ends all over the country in the next three to four weeks. The number of players who opt out of their current situations might turn out to be mind boggling.
“We try to address needs with transfers more than just take transfers,” Mullen said back on national signing day in February. “What ends up happening is maybe you look successful because of instead of just saying, ‘hey … this guy’s a great player, it doesn’t matter, just take him out of the transfer portal’ … we’ve had some opportunities to get some guys that ended up being great players that we didn’t get, but maybe at that moment we didn’t feel the need. We had depth, we had experience at that position.
“We don’t go to the transfer portal always just to create depth or to go get backups. We go get guys we expect that we need to be impact players and play for us … Usually we are hitting the transfer portal a lot for need based on guys that are going to come in and make impacts for any number of reasons whether it’s guys that have transferred out of here, guys that have left early for the NFL, injuries or whatever it is that you have this gap in your roster and we need to fill it with a player that’s going to make an impact.”
Mullen’s situation is far less daunting than that of Mike White. Despite losing eight scholarship players and his starting punter (walk-on) to the transfer portal, Mullen has all but two or three of his scholarships filled. With the four transfers plus the NBA departures of Tre Mann and Scottie Lewis (elected Thursday to hire an agent and leave for the pros) combined with the uncertain status of Keyontae Johnson, White will have to hit the transfer portal hard to have adequate depth next season. That’s the bad news. The good news is that White has had at least one impact transfer each of the last five seasons so he’s no novice at finding players ready to leave their current circumstance.
Canyon Barry was the SEC Sixth Man of the Year in 2017 after transferring in from Charleston. Egor Koulechov transferred in from Rice in 2017-18, finished second in scoring and led UF in rebounding. Jalen Hudson, who sat out 2017 after transferring in from Virginia Tech, averaged 12.3 points and 3.4 rebounds in 2018 and 2019. Kerry Blackshear Jr. was second team All-SEC in 2020 when he averaged 12.8 points and a team-leading 7.5 rebounds per game after transferring in from Virginia Tech. This past season, Cleveland State transfer Tyree Appleby averaged 11.3 points, 3.1 rebounds and 3.3 assists and Louisiana Tech transfer Anthony Duruji averaged 6.1 points and 4.4 rebounds. Michigan transfer Colin Castleton finished second on the team in scoring (12.4) and led the team in rebounding (6.4) and blocked shots (54) while making second team All-SEC. Castleton declared for the NBA but won’t hire an agent. It’s all but certain he will return next season.
Appleby, Duruji and Castleton give White three returning starters to go with returning reserves Samson Ruzhentsev, Neils Lane and Jason Jitoboh. Incoming signee Kowacie Reeves has the credentials to be a freshman starter. That is seven players. White will need at least four more players to have a competitive SEC roster. Figure at least three will come from the transfer portal.
Replacing that many players was never part of White’s plan, but he isn’t the only SEC coach facing a roster rebuild due to transfers and players leaving for the pros. At Missouri, Cuonzo Martin has lost five to the transfer portal. South Carolina’s Frank Martin has had three transfer out and another two leave for the NBA. Georgia coach Tom Crean has had four leave via the transfer route. LSU coach Will Wade expects four to leave for the pros. Kermit Davis Jr. at Ole Miss has had five transfer out and one leave for the pros. Three have transferred out at Auburn and Bruce Pearl expects Sharif Cooper to be a first round NBA draft pick.
And that’s just the Southeastern Conference.
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On Wednesday of this week, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in Alston vs. the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The issue is player compensation and whether schools have the right to compensate athletes in whatever way they choose as long as the player is receiving educational benefits from the school. Based on the way the nine justices grilled the NCAA, it seems inevitable that how we view amateur athletics will change once the court issues its decision in the fall. What it means is rich schools will be able to offer kids financial opportunities that aren’t available elsewhere, which is only going to increase the number of transfers.
Combining this name, image and likeness decision with the free agency element that will be created when the NCAA grants the one-time transfer without penalty means the surface is only being scratched when it comes to wholesale departures. It seems inevitable that chaos will reign at least for the first two or three years, perhaps several years beyond the initial changes. Just as professional baseball, football and basketball changed when free agency kicked in, so will college sports as we know them.
If there is an advantage to be found in these foreseeable difficult times ahead it is that both Dan Mullen and Mike White are well versed in the nuances of bringing in transfers. This is not the first rodeo for either coach in Florida’s two revenue producing sports but even two veterans of working the transfer system like Mullen and White are going to have to adjust. Whereas having more transfers to choose from may make it easier to bring in quality players who fit the needs, the flip side is that it will be easier for players to move on from UF.
So, strap yourself in. The ride is going to be wild and potentially rocky moving forward as players have more options to discover if the grass really is greener somewhere other than above the septic tank.
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