So where do all the basketball players that hit the transfer portal actually go?

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I’ve given up trying to actually track since, since it certainly feels like roughly every single men’s college basketball player has hit the transfer portal. For a minute, Baylor’s basketball roster contained exactly zero basketball players. I don’t think they’re the only team either.

But thankfully, some folks actually are crunching the numbers. Last week, AD Advisors (led by former Auburn Athletic Director Jay Jacobs) and Timark Partners released a white paper on the transfer portal in men’s basketball. This was a follow-up from their Dec 2024 research paper, centered on the experiences of FBS football players.

And what did this research tell us, besides that wooboy a whole lot of basketball players hit the portal at least once over the course of their career? Roughly 65%, if we want to be specific about it.

The study grouped DI programs into three “tiers”. Tier 1 consisted of the A4 leagues, plus the Big East. Tier 2 included the A10, AAC, MWC and WCC, and Tier 3 included everybody else.

And their paper found that the most common outcome for players hitting the portal? Moving down.

To put it another way, the study found that roughly 7% of the players who transferred out of a Tier 3 program found their way to a Tier 1 program. Only about 16% of Tier 2 transfer players moved to a Tier 1 league.

Is this a bad thing? Well,,,it depends

The dirty little secret about the transfer portal is that sometimes, players don’t actually want to hit the portal…but they get strongly, uh, encouraged to do so by a coaching staff. The industry term for this is “processing”, but even though it isn’t technically supposed to happen, it absolutely does.

But you also have players who transfer because they believe they can secure more money, more playing time, or a better athletic “fit” at another program. And of course, you have players who decide to portal for reasons that have little to do with athletics at all. Maybe they got homesick, or want to move closer to family. 19-year-olds make big choices for all kinds of different reasons.

If we look at basketball transfer portal decisions completely as basketball-only moves, a strong downward mobility may not be the worst thing in the world. Recruiting is an imprecise science, and a Big Ten player who was incorrectly evaluated and is really more of a Missouri Valley level talent may very well have a better experience in the Missouri Valley. A strong current of players moving “down” could be an example of talent eventually finding its level, with players moving towards systems that better fit their abilities…and with the few athletes who dramatically improve from where they were as high-schools, having the ability to play on a bigger stage.

Over time, perhaps this could even help college basketball parity. Maybe.

Of course, college basketball players aren’t just spreadsheet cells. They’re humans, and changing college basketball teams means changing colleges. A decision could be a positive for a college basketball career but a negative for many other important outcomes that fall outside the scope of this particular study.

Potentially useful information for anybody advising college athletic departments or college athletes. In order to be an elite athlete, you probably need the irrational confidence to think that duh, of course you’ll be in that seven percent. But it never hurts to know the real math.

Here’s what else we wrote last week

It was a busy week last week! Maybe you missed a few things!

• I dug into the Nico Iamaleava-Tennessee- divorce, because I think the mainstream #discourse missed a few things. I hope everything works out for Nico at UCLA, and I also hope that this whole episode could shift donor behavior in a slightly more rational direction. It won’t, of course, but I can hope.

• I passed the mic over to Donna Lopiano of Sports Management Resources (and many other places) to share her thoughts about the House settlement. SPOILER: She really doesn’t like it!

• I talked to a campaign finance expert and dug around the archives a bit to find out if it would be legal for a politician to try to win voter support by throwing a ton of cash at NIL. Is this legal? Almost certainly. Is it a good idea? Well,,,,,maybe?

• I interviewed the football GM at NC State to better understand what sort of skills…hard and soft skills, go into being an effective GM.

• We also had another big week at Extra Points Library. We’re just about at 6,500 total documents, and I’ve added dozens of updated FB/MBB/WBB coach contracts, as well as football feasibility studies, some more GM contracts, and more.

I have a few other reported newsletters that will drop this week, and will be working the phones to learn more about a variety of upcoming stories. You can be sure to get all the newsletter we put out by subscribing here:

Thanks for reading everybody, and I hope you had a wonderful Easter holiday (if you celebrate Easter). I’ll see you on the internet this week!