How the transfer portal changed the NFL Draft. Plus, a Beast gem

New York Times

10-04-2025

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Today in college football news, most foods might as well just be calzones.
I really like the third day of the NFL Draft. Not watching it exactly, but having it on a screen somewhere and noticing once an hour that somebody has been drafted from Division III or New Zealand or even your rival. (That last one was a joke. None of your rival's draft picks count, because of the portal or their grades or whatever.)
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So yesterday when The Athletic published 'The Beast,' Dane Brugler's annual draft scouting spectacular, I did the normal thing: Try to find the most obscure player who earned a 300-word writeup from Dane despite being unlikely to get drafted. But before I got that far, a name caught my eye: Hunter Dekkers.
Remember that moment in 2023 when it felt like everybody in college sports was about to be wrapped up in a million different gambling probes? One of the most noteworthy was at Iowa State, where Dekkers, the 3,000-yard starting QB, lost his NCAA eligibility for betting on his school in a variety of sports, including his own.
It was from Dane's report on Dekkers that I learned what the 23-year-old has been up to ever since:
'After sitting out the 2023 season (and having his appeal for reinstatement denied by the NCAA), he enrolled at Iowa Western Community College. He led the program to an 11-2 record and a spot in the NJCAA national title game (lost to Hutchinson Community College 28-23).
'(…) Overall, Dekkers' past will be interpreted differently across the league, but the lefty passer has draftable talent.'
Hey, that'd be something! Dane ranks the 6-foot-2 Dekkers No. 15 among QBs, in the realm of Auburn's Payton Thorne ('better than the message boards suggested') and Missouri's Brady Cook ('his mother played soccer at Truman State').
Overall, this has got to be the only draft preview that's so extensive, it ranks both of the British Columbia quarterbacks who threw at the Thunderbirds' pro day. And yes, Dane's long snapper rankings include a player from Division II's Colorado School of Mines. I linked the term 'long snapper rankings' with tremendous confidence. Nobody can avoid clicking it.
In case you'd like to find yourself scrolling so far into wide receiver rankings that you wonder where Millersville University is (Pennsylvania, alma mater of multiple members of The Roots): That overall link to 'The Beast' is here.
💰 Former Florida, Arizona State and Georgia QB Jaden Rashada can proceed with his lawsuit against Billy Napier over that $13.85 million NIL debacle, a judge ruled Tuesday. (Yes, Rashada is in the portal.)
🌸 A better idea than spring games: preseason games. Scott Dochterman explains. We'll come back to this one next week.
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☀️ Ten years ago, Lamar Jackson ranked as the No. 58 recruit … in the state of Florida. Manny Navarro reviewed how the rest of that group ended up.
🐔 What's South Carolina's ceiling? Whatever number you just thought about, Shane Beamer will use it as motivation.
⁉️ Texas A&M's defensive line has (well, had) a motto so ill-advised, one player's attempt to censor it actually made it much worse.
⏰ More draft stuff:
🏀 Still thinking about that brutal moment for Houston at the end of Monday's title game. The inside story.
That morsel comes from Nick Kosmider's new look at how much more complicated draft season has become over the past few years, with scouts having to piece together player profiles from different schools, conferences and levels, sometimes without being able to talk to a single college coach who knew that player for more than a year or two.
Here's something especially worth keeping in mind:
'It's not just about the money when you transfer,' longtime agent Juan Lozano said. 'It allows guys to answer questions about themselves that other people have about them. You get to check off that box about a certain question — level of competition; can he do this one skill thing, whatever it may be.'
Often, transferring gets framed as a one-time NIL cash-in. (Sure, often that's true, and that's usually pretty great, actually. Money is useful!)
But for players whose realistic goals are to improve their draft stock from UDFA to seventh-rounder, a transfer toward more playing time, better competition or a more favorable scheme actually is the kind of forward-thinking personal development that we all say we want college sports to revolve around.
There's a lot more here in Kosmider's story, including on the NFL scouts who've found themselves evaluating more and more 25-year-old fathers.
Now let's hurl the mic toward Stewart Mandel, and I'll see you next week. As always, reach out to [e-mail] with thoughts on what you'd like to see in this newsletter!
You were at the House settlement hearing on Monday. It seems like the judge is inclined to accept the settlement. What sports will be the first to become extinct at the D-I level? — Jesse K
The settlement is deeply flawed. I still don't see how you can resolve an antitrust suit with more restrictions — both a salary cap ($20.5 million per school) that the athletes did not negotiate and a third-party clearinghouse that could squash outside NIL deals it deems above 'market value.' But Wilken basically said that's not her problem. All she's trying to determine is whether the settlement is a fair compromise for the two sides.
And as the NCAA's primary lawyer, Rakesh Kilaru, kept saying: It's a better system than the one we have now.
As for the last part of the question, no one can say with any certainty what the unintended consequences will be. Entire sports programs going away seems fatalistic, but we know not everyone will be able to afford this new model. Especially the farther you go down the ladder.
I just hope the Power 4 programs don't use this as an excuse to cut sports. They can afford them. They just have to stop burning money on raises for mediocre coaches with no leverage and the enormous buyouts that follow them.
More from Stewart's mailbag here.
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