The Mighty Bruin Guide to Transfer Portal Recruiting and NIL

Taking a look at what positions UCLA should try to target in the portal, and why the NIL situation is so poor at the moment.

Dec 07, 2024

UCLA will look very different next season. (Photo credit: uclabruins.com)

Thanks to a 5-7 record, UCLA football is entering the offseason earlier than many hoped, with no bowl game on the horizon to look forward to. There are plenty of questions swirling around the program currently, from the status of both offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy (who was let go and replaced by Indiana co-offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri in the process of writing this piece!) and defensive coordinator Ikaika Malloe, to which players choose to enter the transfer portal, to how the Bruins finish up high school recruiting and attack the transfer portal. I won’t be discussing all of these questions today but I did want to focus on the transfer portal and NIL here.

First off, this is not a discussion of which UCLA players will be leaving, or what UCLA needs to focus on in the portal. Frankly, given the amount of talent out of eligibility after this year, the answer to that question is “every position, and then offensive line again”. But transfer portal recruiting is a bit more nuanced than just picking names out of the hat, and what positions you look to reinforce through the portal matters just as much as the players themselves. It also matters how much NIL funding you have from your collective, and there is a chicken-and-egg problem regarding that funding that needs to be addressed.

With the increasing importance of transfer portal recruiting at the Power 4 level, I think it is important that we all better understand what UCLA should look for in the portal and how best to build something sustainable. I’ve compiled this list off of a few years of observational data, and while this list is by no means absolute, I do think it represents a fair assessment of what a winning program should be looking for.

(How to read this list: if you see Transfer Portal, that means you should feel free to go after players in this spot. That does not mean only go the transfer portal for these players, however, as high school recruiting is still important.)

Offensive Transfer List

Quarterback: If you have an elite option, do it. Otherwise, high school development is the way to go.

Quaterback is perhaps the most important position on the football field, so you really want to have this position taken care of before looking into the portal. I’ve come around to the idea that the quarterback position is one that benefits from internal development, and so a program ideally wants to get the future quarterback into the system as soon as possible to help them develop. Ideally, this would mean bringing in a quarterback coming out of high school and developing them, but this can also mean bringing in a talented college transfer after their freshman year. Looking back at last year’s College Football Playoffs, three of the starting quarterbacks in the field fit this description, while the fourth (Michael Penix) sits more as an outlier, as the quarterback had already had a year working with head coach Kalen DeBoer before transferring to Washington and playing two more years. You can do the same thing with this year’s championship frontrunners - Georgia and Texas both have home-developed quarterbacks, as do Penn State, Clemson, Tennessee, and SMU.

Notre Dame, Oregon, Miami, and to a lesser extent Ohio State fit into the second option, which is going to grab an elite option if it is available. Riley Leonard had an exceptional two years at Duke and, when healthy, is one of the better quarterbacks in the country. Dillon Gabriel is a hyper-accurate passer who fits perfectly with Oregon’s offensive system, and Cam Ward is likely going to grab a trip to New York as a Heisman trophy finalist. Will Johnson of Ohio State isn’t a truly elite option, and I think that became clear when his inability to stay on time cost the Buckeyes against Oregon and Michigan this season. But if you have the chance (and money) and an elite quarterback looks your way, that’s the only time you should be considering the portal. Otherwise, take your lumps and develop someone.

Running Back/Receivers: Transfer Portal

I’m linking these two spots together because, of any on the offense, grabbing skill position players from the portal seems the least likely to backfire. It helps that UCLA has seen a ton of success with transfer portal players in these spots, sure, but in general, these two positions are the most plug-and-play on offense and don’t require a huge amount of internal development compared to other positions. As a quick aside,

Tight End: Transfer Portal possible, but multiple years if want a blocking option

I find that teaching good blocking techniques is much harder than teaching route-running, so if you want a blocking tight end, you need time to develop them. If you want a pure route runner, feel free to go transfer portal.

Offensive Line: Transfer Portal to plug gaps, but long-term development

After a few years of watching teams try to assemble an offensive line through the portal, I feel confident in saying this is the one spot on offense where you absolutely 100% need to develop as much of your depth chart as possible from the high school level as possible.

There are a few reasons for this. One is that good blocking technique is taught less and less at the high school level, especially as the 7 on 7 circuit grows. Linemen don’t have the same year-long development cycle that skill position players get, and a lot of their development falls in the hands of high school coaches who may not be very good. Getting these guys in early and having your (hopefully very good) offensive line coach begin to develop them is more crucial than ever.

The other reason is that good offensive line play takes time to develop cohesion. There is a lot of communication that takes place along the offensive line on every play, and it does not matter how highly rated the players on your line are if they cannot communicate blitz pick-ups with each other effectively. Again, this is where getting players in as early as possible is important, as the more those players get comfortable with the system in place and how to communicate within it, the easier it is to switch out pieces with little drop-off. You can integrate an experienced offensive lineman into a group that has the chemistry already built, but it is much, much more difficult to try and build that chemistry with five new pieces.

If you have to go diving around for offensive linemen, what you should target depends largely on your needs. If you have a good line already and need, say, a left tackle, it is easy enough to bring in one ringer for that position. But if your entire line is made up of not-very-good players, you are better off grabbing as many lottery tickets from the high school ranks as possible, or taking linemen who have played only a year or two of college, and be willing to take your lumps as the group develops.

Defensive Transfer List

Defensive Line: High School and Develop, Transfer to Supplement

Spoiler alert here, but this is essentially the only spot where I think the focus should be on trying to develop players long-term. Similar to offensive linemen, there is a dearth of technique taught at the high school level for defensive linemen, and maybe more importantly a dearth of actual weight room and fitness programs that can lead to positive size and strength gain. It is rare to see a player come in as a freshman to the offensive line and provide meaningful minutes, but that is all the more reason to grab as many projectable bodies as you can and develop them. Consider it like lottery tickets, and the more lottery tickets you possess, the better chance you have of striking it right.

Linebackers: Transfer Portal

Defensive Backs: Transfer Portal

Again, this is not to say don’t recruit these spots out of high school, but I do think it is pretty easy to find players who can plug into your system and contribute. Consider UCLA’s defense this past year: two linebackers were internal development players Kain Medrano and Carson Schwesinger, but every other position was manned by a transfer.

The key here is the idea of playable depth. You can grab a few highly-regarded transfers for these positions, but the best teams are the ones that can go to the second string and not see a noticeable drop-off. On defense with the rotation of players, I think that is more critical, so having more options that have seen playing time before works to your benefit in these spots than in others.

Kicking: Just get someone who can do the job and give them a scholarship

This was one of my bugaboos of the Chip Kelly era in his insistence on not bringing in scholarship-level kickers. It cost UCLA more than a few games over his tenure, and it is safe to say Mateen Bhaghani helped win a couple of games this year. Scholarship limits aren’t real anymore, so it doesn’t matter if you get your kicker through the transfer portal or high school, just find someone who can be consistent.

The Chicken-or-Egg Problem of NIL

Let’s dive into NIL a bit more, and why it is such a problem for UCLA currently.

I did an NIL primer last year that still holds up, so I suggest reading that first so that you have a grasp of the concept. The only major update is the resolution to House v NCAA, which provides a path to revenue sharing for college athletes. As of right now, schools will be able to pay all of their athletes from a pool of money (I’ve seen around $20-22 million at the P2 level). That applies to all sports, which means football is sharing that $20 million with basketball, gymnastics, softball, and others. Now, this will not be equal revenue share, and the expectation is that most schools will devote the largest share of that money to their football teams; I’ve seen rumors are that the Big Ten will cap the football share at around $15 million. The House settlement also includes some language to try and rein in NIL from the lawless state it currently inhabits, but there are questions of the legality of this language. In either case, the House settlement is scheduled to go in effect starting with the 2025-2026 academic year.

Revenue sharing will be a major boost to a program like UCLA because its NIL is, quite frankly, in the toilet compared to its peers. There are a lot of factors for why that is the case, including:

A decade of mediocrity for football. Again, the damage Chip Kelly caused to this program is staggering.
Donor fatigue related to a string of poor hires (Dorrell→Neuheisel→Mora→Kelly will do that).
Poor donor relations, especially from Athletic Director Martin Jarmond and former coach Chip Kelly. Deshaun Foster has not been notably better on this front, which is only hurting his cause.
Administrative pushback towards NIL, which is unsurprising from the notoriously conservative UCLA administration.

That is likely just scratching the surface, but the general point here is that UCLA is woefully behind other programs when it comes to NIL funds available. I should also note that we are not comparing UCLA to an Ohio State, just to use an example. There is no expectation that UCLA will compete in the same ballpark as the top 5-6 schools, but it isn’t even in the middle of the pack, instead sitting near the back.

I refer to NIL as a chicken-or-egg problem because of the circular nature of the funding. It is increasingly obvious that coaches need a good NIL base in order to gain access to the good transfers in the portal, which will allow them to win games. But people will only donate to the NIL collective if they feel they are getting their money’s worth, either by seeing a good product on the field or being sold on that product being close by a new head coach. And so the cycle rolls on; the better your program, the more likely you have good NIL so that you can afford good players to keep your program good.

This also explains why UCLA has its current NIL problem. Donor relations are already not great with Martin Jarmond, especially with his handling of the end of the Chip Kelly era. Deshaun Foster was already a hard sell to many of these donors who were hoping for a fresh face, as he was billed by Jarmond and himself as a continuation of the Chip Kelly era that many of them disliked. So Foster really needed to do a great job this season to change the perception of his hiring among the donor class and that…really didn’t happen. The combination of losing to Southern Cal and missing out on a bowl game is a tough one-two to hit donors with, and then the past few days in recruiting have not helped matters.

Also, before I get into the changes, I will also note that the sidelining of Men of Westwood into being the men’s basketball collective while putting a level of disconnect between Ken Graiwer and the football program doesn’t really sit well with me. I know that NIL primer features me taking shots at Men of Westwood, but since it came out the collective took a lot of my criticisms in stride, becoming more transparent and front-facing, and has done an excellent job with basketball fundraising to the point where UCLA has one of the better basketball collectives in the country. It just feels like a needless restructuring to put more people who could be deemed loyal to Jarmond and/or Foster in place.

Anyway, all of that is to say that Deshaun Foster finally started trying to turn things around in the past 24 hours, starting with the departure of Eric Bieniemy. There was a lot of fear regarding Bieniemy’s future at UCLA; while the cheap option would have been to keep him around for another year, the most UCLA option would have been to let him keep his job while he was actively searching for a new one. Yet Foster thankfully recognized how untenable it was to keep an offensive coordinator who led the Bruins to one of the worst offensive outputs in the country while driving a lot of players into the transfer portal and moved to make the change. Moreover, Foster already found a replacement in Tino Sunseri, a decidedly un-UCLA move to grab a young up-and-coming coach. Sunseri won’t officially join the team until after Indiana is done with the playoffs, but UCLA has been communicating the change that has been happening to recruits for the past few days, which is a nice change of pace from the Kelly era in and of itself.

That said, I also don’t think this move by itself will be enough to turn UCLA around next season. The team was already set to lose a ton of talent just due to attrition and players graduating, and as I’ve said UCLA’s NIL situation is not great, so bringing in a ton of instant-impact players was not likely in the cards. The best you can hope for is some kind of progress and improvement next year, which I know is not an exciting prospect, but maybe UCLA needs to try and do things normally for a bit.

Go Bruins.

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