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The combination of the transfer portal and NIL deals has injected an unprecedented amount of chaos into college sports, and smaller schools are struggling to grapple with the new reality they’ve been forced to reckon with. That includes the University of Albany, and men’s basketball coach Dwayne Killings has dreamed up a very unique proposal the help mid-majors like his weather the storm.
When the NCAA introduced the transfer portal in 2018, it eliminated the one-year waiting period players had previously had to endure before suiting up after taking their talents to another school. The hiatus still applied if they decided to transfer a second time, but that policy was rescinded in 2024 courtesy of a lawsuit that allowed for immediate eligibility in virtually every scenario.
While those changes seemed like a good idea in theory, they left a lot to be desired in practice—which can also be said about the advent of the NIL Era that kicked off in 2021 in the wake of the landmark Supreme Court ruling that essentially forced the NCAA to allow college athletes to profit off of their talents.
Those changes were responsible for the perfect storm of chaos that has been swirling over college sports in the past few years, and it’s hard not to be worried about the direction in which things are trending due to the troubling amount of instability programs around the country have been grappling with as a result.
The most recent transfer portal window saw more than 2,500 men’s basketball players get in on the action by the time it closed on Wednesday, and nothing sums up the headaches teams are dealing with like the fact that every single player who was on Baylor’s roster last season could be gone by the time the next one gets underway.
It doesn’t seem like there are any straightforward solutions to address what seems to be a wildly unsustainable system, but according to CBS Sports, Albany’s Dwayne Killings has dreamed up a fairly radical plan he thinks has the potential to inject some much-needed stability into the current landscape.
Killings previously spent some time working for the NBA as a player development specialist in what is now the G League, and during a recent conversation with the outlet, he shared his proposal for an idea that would harness that model while giving mid-majors the chance to foster the talents of guys who would probably end up riding the bench at a more prominent program, saying:
“We are speaking to coaches about identifying a player that, if he left the high-major ranks to come to Albany, a place with a recently renovated $16 million arena, to get the opportunity to develop through playing, this could present a partnership that could change college recruiting as we move into the post-House settlement area.
The reason why this idea came about is become of my experience in the G League. During my time there, I watched a lot of players develop for the NBA. We’re moving to a model like that in modern-day college basketball.”
It’s a fairly revolutionary idea that would require plenty of hurdles to be cleared before being instituted; it seems like the biggest one would be the financial implications stemming from an agreement between two schools sharing a player on a scholarship who may also be receiving NIL money (Killings envisions a scenario where the more prestigious team donates to fund while essentially paying for skill development).
It’s hard to imagine the potential adoption of that kind of program is even close to becoming a reality, but it’s certainly an intriguing concept that’s worth keeping an eye on.