Transfer Portal Management/Results.

[Mikey 16,576]

There is a rating of team's results in the transfer portal, incoming only. Link below. Auburn is 9th of 13 SEC teams. (UGA didn't take any incoming transfers) This puts Auburn at 29th overall, which is ten spots below our rank of 19th in regular recruiting.

AU has had 20 players enter the portal and brought in five. That's a net loss of 15. Make of that what you will.

Although others have a different opinion, I think we have 7 slots left for this class. We had 23 available for regular recruiting and signed 18. We had seven extra "transfer only" slots and have used five. 18 plus 5 =23 used, leaving 7 openings.

Now, we only had 23 available because in the 2021 class, teams were allowed to fudge. In a ruling only the NCAA could devise, a team could sign players in 2021, have them play on the team in 2021 and count them as signing in the class of '22. We used two slots for this, thus only 23 regular slots were available for the current class.

I assume all seven remaining slots will be used for transfers. We need to get on the stick and do some serious improvement in portal management. The pickings will be slim from here on out. AU needs to find seven sharp needles in a very big hay stack, a stack in which many others are also searching for the same things.

https://247sports.com/Season/2022-Football/TransferTeamRankings/

[AuburnNTexas 7,140]

9 hours ago, Mikey said:

There is a rating of team's results in the transfer portal, incoming only. Link below. Auburn is 9th of 13 SEC teams. (UGA didn't take any incoming transfers) This puts Auburn at 29th overall, which is ten spots below our rank of 19th in regular recruiting.

AU has had 20 players enter the portal and brought in five. That's a net loss of 15. Make of that what you will.

Although others have a different opinion, I think we have 7 slots left for this class. We had 23 available for regular recruiting and signed 18. We had seven extra "transfer only" slots and have used five. 18 plus 5 =23 used, leaving 7 openings.

Now, we only had 23 available because in the 2021 class, teams were allowed to fudge. In a ruling only the NCAA could devise, a team could sign players in 2021, have them play on the team in 2021 and count them as signing in the class of '22. We used two slots for this, thus only 23 regular slots were available for the current class.

I assume all seven remaining slots will be used for transfers. We need to get on the stick and do some serious improvement in portal management. The pickings will be slim from here on out. AU needs to find seven sharp needles in a very big hay stack, a stack in which many others are also searching for the same things.

https://247sports.com/Season/2022-Football/TransferTeamRankings/

Everybody agrees that so far we have not pulled enough players in on the transfer Portal especially a couple of O-Linemen. But you make a big deal about the 20 players who have left.  Unlike you I don't do the scholarship counting and I can't tell you how many scholarship players we have right now if we count the incoming freshman who will count against the 25 limit.  I will wait till you respond but I would bet we will be very close to the 85 limit assuming everything stays the same as now.  My point is if we only had 5-10 leave we would not be able to use any of the 7-10 scholarship's that we still have available. I saw where you said 7 based on past history  if you say 7 it is probably right.

I apologizing for being so verbose but if we had not already lost 20 we would probably have to lose more anyway.  We might even still have to lose some current players if we find players in the Portal. Can you update us on what you believe our current total scholarship count is assuming all the Freshman commits show up this Fall.

[Mikey 16,576]

2 hours ago, AuburnNTexas said:

I apologizing for being so verbose but if we had not already lost 20 we would probably have to lose more anyway

That 20 does not include players who used up their eligibility or decided to try the NFL. 20 is only those entering the transfer portal. We won't be anywhere near the 85 limit come August, which is when the final counting is done. A wild, premature guess is that we'll have somewhere around 75 on scholarship at the start of fall camp. That's if we do decide to fill the seven remaining vacancies under the annual limit and nobody else quits after Spring practice.

What remains to be seen is how the NIL money is going to be spent. It's possible that AU could entice ten or so quality players to walk on at AU with the promise of $100,000 a year each from the NIL. They wouldn't even be on scholarship and wouldn't count against any limit. They could have bad grades and it wouldn't matter. Nobody can yet see through the murky water the NIL ruling has caused.

[Win4AU 4,052]

Florida State is going to start pushing Clemson.  The job Norvell is doing to rebuild that program is pretty impressive for a Gus jr.

[W.E.D 11,070]

13 hours ago, Mikey said:

It's possible that AU could entice ten or so quality players to walk on at AU with the promise of $100,000 a year each from the NIL. They wouldn't even be on scholarship and wouldn't count against any limit.

I'll be interested to see the first school that tries to do this.  There are a lot of hurdles to jump through out of HS to be considered a "non-recruited" player and be eligible for non-scholarship positions.  It would be near impossible for top players.  Transfers, might be different.  I'd imagine as soon as it happens the NCAA will stop it the following season.

[au302 2,669]

Could care less about the 20 out. Needed to happen, and Harsin and co have kept most of the good ones rumored to leave in the fold (Tank, Wooden, and now possibly J. Johnson). There are always a few that hurt, but it's part of cfb.

The concern is filling those 7-10 spots. We need solid depth pieces everywhere, but especially at DL and urgently at EDGE. More concerningly, we need to somehow grab a starting caliber (or two) receivers. That's tough to do this late, but hopefully we get lucky.

EDGE scares me because it's Leota and Hall right now, and we like to use a bunch of guys. I think we need to grab two of them and then switch Cam Riley and Joko, if they stay, over there as well

[bigbird 60,498]

4 hours ago, au302 said:

Could care less about the 20 out. Needed to happen, and Harsin and co have kept most of the good ones rumored to leave in the fold (Tank, Wooden, and now possibly J. Johnson). There are always a few that hurt, but it's part of cfb.

The concern is filling those 7-10 spots. We need solid depth pieces everywhere, but especially at DL and urgently at EDGE. More concerningly, we need to somehow grab a starting caliber (or two) receivers. That's tough to do this late, but hopefully we get lucky.

EDGE scares me because it's Leota and Hall right now, and we like to use a bunch of guys. I think we need to grab two of them and then switch Cam Riley and Joko, if they stay, over there as well

Don't forget about Brooks

[Mikey 16,576]

10 hours ago, W.E.D said:

I'll be interested to see the first school that tries to do this.  There are a lot of hurdles to jump through out of HS to be considered a "non-recruited" player and be eligible for non-scholarship positions.  It would be near impossible for top players.  Transfers, might be different.  I'd imagine as soon as it happens the NCAA will stop it the following season.

The "non recruited player" only comes into play if the player is on some other type of scholarship, say academic. If a player is enticed to enroll in school with nothing but NIL money, he won't be on any scholarship and won't have any restraints. NCAA can take a flying leap.

[oracle79 3,569]

On 2/18/2022 at 10:55 AM, Mikey said:

Although others have a different opinion, I think we have 7 slots left for this class.

Can any of the estimated 7-10 spots be used for the 2023 class as countbacks for early enrollees since we only signed 18 for 2022?

[Mikey 16,576]

11 hours ago, oracle79 said:

Can any of the estimated 7-10 spots be used for the 2023 class as countbacks for early enrollees since we only signed 18 for 2022?

Up to five could be. (23 such slots, 18 signed leaves five available) The remaining two would have to be transfers. We've already used five of our seven transfer slots, so two are available. Every transfer above two will fill one of the five "open" slots, mentioned above.

[AU North 164]

8 hours ago, Mikey said:

Up to five could be. (23 such slots, 18 signed leaves five available) The remaining two would have to be transfers. We've already used five of our seven transfer slots, so two are available. Every transfer above two will fill one of the five "open" slots, mentioned above.

If we were to sign only 2 portal guys the rest of the way, would we then have 30 slots available for HS/Juco recruits in the 2023 class? TIA wde

[Mikey 16,576]

13 minutes ago, AU North said:

If we were to sign only 2 portal guys the rest of the way, would we then have 30 slots available for HS/Juco recruits in the 2023 class? TIA wde

That is correct. IMHO the best thing for AU would be to find transfers that can help immediately and fill all seven slots with them, but that's not going to be an easy thing to accomplish.

[AuburnNTexas 7,140]

5 hours ago, Mikey said:

That is correct. IMHO the best thing for AU would be to find transfers that can help immediately and fill all seven slots with them, but that's not going to be an easy thing to accomplish.

I agree but to be honest I would be happy with a stud WR and 1 or 2 SEC ready O-line with 2 years or more left then have 29-30 for next year which would mean we would need at least 3 O-Line Portal in next years class.

[AU North 164]

AU lost 20 disgruntled players to the portal for various gripes such as PT, coaching methods, etc... I guess we could possibly loose a few more following spring practice. My question is: Will our portal attrition rate return to normal (not sure what normal currently is 6,8,10?) in future years and will it basically be attributed to PT concerns and less about all the other disgruntledness that existed this year. We also had some coaching changes due to non-standard exit issues. Will this also sort itself out and normalize? I know this is all predicated on CBH continuing to lead the program beyond this year. Maybe someone (Mikey?) can help with the actual numbers. wde  

[Hank2020 3,199]

28 minutes ago, AU North said:

AU lost 20 disgruntled players to the portal for various gripes such as PT, coaching methods, etc... I guess we could possibly loose a few more following spring practice. My question is: Will our portal attrition rate return to normal (not sure what normal currently is 6,8,10?) in future years and will it basically be attributed to PT concerns and less about all the other disgruntledness that existed this year. We also had some coaching changes due to non-standard exit issues. Will this also sort itself out and normalize? I know this is all predicated on CBH continuing to lead the program beyond this year. Maybe someone (Mikey?) can help with the actual numbers. wde  

Someone posted earlier that average for this cycle is 11-12. No one knows what future cycles will look like. If anyone says they are just guessing regardless of who the coach is.

[Mikey 16,576]

20 hours ago, AU North said:

Maybe someone (Mikey?) can help with the actual numbers. wde  

Can't help with average loss through the portal, other than what's been tossed around. What's concerning in Auburn's case is 20 lost and only five brought in. I think that's extreme imbalance.

I wouldn't call all the transfers "disgruntled players". Worm Shivers, for example, was a former team captain and known hard worker and all around good team player. T. Manning was a starter on the O-line.

[JerryAU 1,658]

I'm eager to see if we additional fallout to the portal after Spring drills. 

Of the 20 we've lost to the portal, how many haven't found a new home? 

[cbo 7,835]

8 hours ago, Mikey said:

I wouldn't call all the transfers "disgruntled players". Worm Shivers, for example, was a former team captain and known hard worker and all around good team player. 

Good point about Worm. Some of the same people who celebrated Worm's work ethic and toughness (rightfully so) are now saying the transfers were soft. 

[I_M4_AU 7,799]

2 minutes ago, cbo said:

Good point about Worm. Some of the same people who celebrated Worm's work ethic and toughness (rightfully so) are now saying the transfers were soft. 

Worm entered the portal way before all the disgruntled players transferred with parting shots (he made no parting shots as far as I can tell).  Lumping all players that transferred as soft is not an accurate accounting of what happened.

[Mikey 16,576]

9 hours ago, JerryAU said:

I'm eager to see if we additional fallout to the portal after Spring drills. 

Of the 20 we've lost to the portal, how many haven't found a new home? 

According to the 247 site, 13 are placed and 7 are not.

[McLoofus 35,182]

14 hours ago, cbo said:

Good point about Worm. Some of the same people who celebrated Worm's work ethic and toughness (rightfully so) are now saying the transfers were soft. 

Have thought about this quite a bit. 

[AuburnNTexas 7,140]

Worm was beloved and was not a soft player but with Tank, the emergence of Hunter, and signing of Alston he realized he would probably get even less touches then last year. Some of the players left because there were players ahead of them and they wanted a chance to showcase their skills. Some left because they did not like the coaching staff's style. This staff was more demanding then previous staff on things like being on-time to sessions.  We lost 20 players not all of them made comments like Hunter. Some of the players who openly supported Harsin said it was because he was a hard ass and wanted the players to be the best they could be.  There is probably some truth on both sides.

[bigbird 60,498]

On 2/23/2022 at 7:59 AM, Mikey said:

T. Manning was a starter on the O-line.

You keep saying that, and he was...two years ago, but lost his spot last year and was going to be burried this year.

[bigbird 60,498]

On 2/23/2022 at 4:57 PM, cbo said:

Good point about Worm. Some of the same people who celebrated Worm's work ethic and toughness (rightfully so) are now saying the transfers were soft. 

There are a few that I hated. Worm was #1 for me, then Tennison, Pegues and Height. The others? Not so much

[Mikey 16,576]

1 hour ago, bigbird said:

You keep saying that, and he was...two years ago, but lost his spot last year and was going to be burried this year.

Kentucky snapped him up immediately. Right now, they are in a better position than we are, personnel wise. So, somebody with better players than we have thinks the guy is an upgrade.

1 hour ago, bigbird said:

There are a few that I hated. Worm was #1 for me, then Tennison, Pegues and Height. The others? Not so much

Except that AU has failed to replace those others and by now, the pond is very much fished out.

This August, will AU have 75 players on scholarship before some slots are handed out to walkons as a courtesy? It's looking doubtful. Someone made a big deal out of Michigan State having a successful season last year after bringing in 19 transfers. Sadly, AU got it backwards. We've lost 20 (so far) and only brought in five.