By: Mike Anthony

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Over the last year, ardent followers of college football were introduced to the transfer portal.

The creative name served to describe a new and more liberal process in which the NCAA facilitated student-athletes wishing to leave a school in which they are currently enrolled in hopes of landing at another school and playing the same sport.

Transfers are nothing new. While especially prominent in football and basketball, it’s never been world-shattering news for a player to begin his or her collegiate playing career at one school, only to move on to another. But the emergence of the transfer portal seems to have kicked the process into overdrive.

Whereas the process of transferring was previously a secretive method that involved third and fourth-party conversations that were rarely known by the public, the portal ostensibly makes the process of moving from one high-profile program to another akin to the offseason free agent frenzy of professional sports.

Initial reaction to the portal was pretty predictable. The multi-billion-dollar college sports industry is propped up by universities, boosters and media corporations that all have huge investments and stand to make even bigger profits off the success of 18-22 year old kids, who never see a cent of the money.

So, of course, those controlling entities have thrown plenty of negative opinions at a process that throws their assumed profits into flux.

All around the country, there have been cries of how there is no loyalty to schools on the part of athletes despite them accepting full scholarships.

There is also the widespread opinion that athletes aren’t showing any toughness or accountability, quickly leaving for another school if they don’t get their playing time right away.

Those complaints won’t stop anytime soon, but they are also the talking points of a side that is going to lose this battle.

Legislation has already passed paving the way for future collegiate athletes to financially benefit off of the use of their likeness, when their schools do the same.

The creation of the transfer portal is likely to be a similarly huge step forward for athletes, as it creates a sort of free agency for them despite several courts squashing attempts of college athletes to form any sort of alliance that could act in the same manner as players’ unions in professional leagues.

The transfer portal isn’t going to cool down anytime soon and for good reason.

Long gone are the days where someone has to be well into their professional career before society thinks he or she should be able to control the terms of their employment.

It’s plainly evident that millions of dollars of sales, marketing and promotion are firmly anchored to, and dependent upon, college kids.

And due to current regulations, those college kids are still smuggling extra food out of the campus cafeteria and depending on mom and dad for gas money to get home for the holidays, even if their face is flashing across your television screen on a College Football Playoff promo a dozen times each night.

The transfer portal isn’t an out for college athletes. It’s a long-overdue taste of just a little bit of sovereignty in a system that has never allowed it before.