On Monday, the NCAA Transfer Portal officially opened for men’s college basketball, leaving Sweet Sixteen head coaches in a tough situation.
One of them, Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo, criticized the way the portal works, ranting about it opening while teams are still dancing.
ESPN Analyst Seth Greenberg Supports Tom Izzo’s Transfer Portal Criticism
On Thursday’s edition of the “Pat McAfee Show,” ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg supported Izzo’s take, going on his own rant about the portal.
“Yeah, it’s brutal. I’m 100% with Tom [Izzo],” Greenberg said. “The portal is open twelve months a year, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, alright? Like you saw the kid that’s going to St. John’s from Arizona State? I mean the portal opened Monday he committed Tuesday. The portal’s open seven days a week, twelve months a year, 24 hours a day.”
“Having said that, the day of Selection Sunday to the end of the tournament should be a dead period, 100% should be a dead period. We have dead periods in the recruiting calendar throughout the year. Why would you put coaches and players and everyone else in a situation where you’re getting ready to play the biggest game of your career as a player, as a coach, alright?”
“You’ve had this unbelievable journey to get to this point. It’s a Sweet 16, and [guard] Justin Pippen is putting his name in the portal, and he plays for Michigan, and they’re in the Sweet 16. Why would we be in that moment? It’s so easy to say, ‘you know what? Brackets come out, boom, dead period.’ The Wednesday after the championship game, it gets live again, and then we eliminate all of this conversation. It just makes common sense, you’re putting players in a bad place, and then like even the coaches.”
“You don’t know who’s in the portal and who’s not in the portal because these teams that are playing, you don’t have those conversations after, but the agents, the agents are running recruiting. The parents? Yeah. But it’s the agents that are totally running recruiting, like guys are in the portal and guys are being talked about in terms of being shopped, they don’t even know they’re being shopped.”
“These are agents, they’re not even agents, more the old school runners like you have a guy on campus and be working a guy, these guys are legitimately making calls around, and they’re setting the market. Now, here’s what the coaches gotta do. The coaches, one, we gotta fix that. The second thing is, they’re throwing out like two million dollars like it’s a twenty dollar bill, ‘Oh yeah, my guy’s worth two million dollars.’ Some of these coaches gotta call their bluffs.”
“Say ‘you know what, you want two million dollars, good, let him go take two million dollars [somewhere else].’ There are very few players like this; I’m gonna give you an example: Indiana spent a ton of money in the portal, didn’t they? Well, did they play in the NCAA tournament? … Look, I’m a big [new Indiana head coach Darian] DeVries guy, but if you go around, teams that spent all that money, they’re not playing now, they’re not playing now.”
KEEP READING: Tom Izzo Sounds Off on NCAA Tournament Expansion: ‘I Hope They Do What’s Right’
“Look, [Kansas] State paid [former Illinois guard] Coleman Hawkins two million dollars, not in the tournament; I can go through the list of all the guys that overspent, overpaid, [former Utah State forward] Great Osobor went to Washington, not in the tournament. Like you’ve gotta get the right dudes.”
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