March Madness has always been on of the most exciting time in college sports.But lately it feels like it’s changed for the worse though with the transfer portal and NIL. The introduction of the transfer portal and NIL has really shaken things up.
First of all, the transfer portal allows players to switch schools much more easily than before and as many times as they want with no restrictions. While this can help some athletes find better opportunities, it also means that teams are constantly changing and the idea of building a super team and keeping it together won’t happen.
Instead of building a solid team over a few years, coaches have to be prepared to work with new players every season. My cousin Anthony Gonzales, former Ohio State WR and Indianapolis Colts WR is one of the biggest haters of the transfer portal. He believes it’s not fair to the other kids that some player from another school can just sweep in and steal a position from someone.
And the transfer portal is ruining March Madness because it makes it harder for lower seeds to be able to compete with the bigger schools. The best part of March Madness were the Cinderella stories and the upsets. These don’t nearly happen as much because of the transfer portal and NIL. Players are picking where they want to go to school based off money not opportunity. This is ruining college sports all together. Some college athletes are as young as 17 years old and they can’t even vote, but yet we’re handing them millions of dollars to go to a school. The kids are not mature enough and are too young. It ruins the sport for everyone.
Also, the transfer portal ruins March Madness because it doesn’t allow for the madness to happen. You don’t see the upsets like you used to. You don’t see the UMBC versus Virginia upset where UMBC was a 16 seed and Virgina was the one seed. Nothing happens anymore. The same teams will be in the finals and win it all. The transfer portal will never allow basketball to be the same.
Affecting high school kids and college
It also is affecting kids because of the amount of money they make. Some of them make more in college then they would if they went professional. For example, Coooper Flag, the freshman out of Duke is projected to be a first-round pick in the NBA draft this season. He said he will declare for the draft if he knows that he will be a first round pick or he’ll stay for another season at Duke. Another example is the local high school quarterback out of Archbishop Moeller, Matt Ponatoski.
Ponatoski is predicted to go in the first round in the MLB draft out of high school. Potentially he is the top shortstop in the class of ’26 in the country. Ponatowski also has over 12 D1 offers to go play college football. He has offers from school like Texas A&M and Michigan. Ponatoski could go play college football wherever he wants to.
Ponatowski is making the decision most likely to see how much he can make coming out of the draft and if it will add up more to what he can get in NIL through college football. For more information about Matt Poniatowski and his future, here’s his link 2026 4-star QB Matt Ponatoski named Gatorade Ohio Football Player of the Year – On3.
NIL is destroying sports from all over in both high school and college and kids are getting destroyed.
