South Carolina baseball has been one of the most active teams in the nation in recruiting the transfer portal. So far, the Gamecocks have one of the top portal classes in all of college baseball with 9 players headed to Columbia from other programs, including three of the top transfer names on the market in outfielders Kennedy Jones and Austin Brinling and pitcher Ty Good.
More could be on the way, as well, as Mark Kingston’s team is in the thick of things for Clemson transfer infielder Billy Amick and Central Connecticut State defection Dominic Niman.
However, on Friday, the country’s college baseball coaches were put on notice by the NCAA about transfer portal activities.
Specifically, the NCAA sent out a warning shot (via a memo sent from the American Baseball Coaches Association to every Division-I, Division-II, and Division-III coach) regarding tampering in college baseball.
While the NCAA and ABCA are two separate entities altogether, the language in the memo indicates that the ABCA believes that the NCAA is looking to start investigating tampering. The ABCA memo also says that Director Craig Keilitz does not believe the NCAA will be able to do this well and efficiently.
D1Baseball’s Kendall Rogers published the memo on his Twitter account.
The @ABCA1945 just sent out a memo to every coach at all levels of Division I, II and III baseball about tampering with another program's student athletes. The ABCA is urging programs to report programs who do this to their compliance departments. pic.twitter.com/qboQszoRiD
— Kendall Rogers (@KendallRogers) June 30, 2023
The memo addresses coaches with a clear message: tampering is rampant in the college game right now, and the combination of NIL and the transfer portal are not being handled in the way they were intended.
Instead of the portal and NIL being used to benefit student-athletes who need a new opportunity and/or reward players with chances to make money using their names, images, and likenesses, some coaches have been (illegally) utilizing NIL as a means of luring players into the transfer portal and, subsequently, to their programs.
Technically, a coach from another program cannot recruit a player from another program unless that player is already in the transfer portal. And, technically, a coach cannot offer NIL compensation as a means of recruiting a player (whether from high school, junior college, or the transfer portal). To do so would be tampering.
It has become abundantly clear that this has become an epidemic in college baseball.
At the beginning of the 2023 season, Tennessee Volunteer head coach Tony Vitello was suspended for three games for the way his program allegedly handled the transfer portal recruitment of former Kansas Jayhawk shortstop Maui Ahuna.
The Vitello-Ahuna situation is far from the only instance of tampering in college baseball, and the ABCA memo encourages coaches to report other coaches and programs who tamper.
Frankly, reporting other programs for tampering could open Pandora’s Box as the issue seems outrageously widespread. However, the ABCA’s memo seems to indicate that the NCAA will be attempting to crack down on the issue, and if that happens, there could be much more than one three-game suspension upcoming.