THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: When the transfer portal hits close to home

On the menu for today …

We were fiddling around with the notion of sharing some of this week’s better notes and quotes, while trying desperately to sort out the rules (or lack of them) regarding the college sports transfer portal.

Before long, it became a bit obvious that discussing the portal, and those roughly 1,500 athletes currently waiting to get beamed up somewhere new (or deciding to stay put), truly requires more than simply a short “notes” item.


Disclaimer: I hate this current version of the transfer portal, which allows student-athletes to move from school to school — and become eligible to play — pretty much immediately.

There are plenty of other people who dislike the portal as much as I do — Gonzaga’s Mark Few, for instance — and we’ll get to that in a moment.

Meanwhile, though, the subject has turned up right on our front porch, since Washington State is involved in one of the headline transfer stories of this football off season.

OK, IT’S not the most spectacular move so far. Oklahoma’s Heisman Trophy candidate Caleb Williams perhaps following former coach Lincoln Riley to USC is the most dramatic — nothing yet official, but Williams is in the portal and Southern Cal seems the logical destination.

Wazzu’s moves, though, are definitely newsworthy, because the whole process seems something like a revolving door.

Just a few weeks ago, Coug fans would have been excited over the future exploits of QB Jayden de Laura, who (among other accomplishments) led Wazzu to a 40-13 beatdown of Washington in Seattle — and then, amidst a mob of adoring supporters who’d made the cross-state trip for a wild celebration on U-Dub’s once-sacred turf, de Laura grabbed the iconic Ol’ Crimson flag and planted it smack at midfield.

Wow!

How much more fun would young Jayden provide WSU boosters over the next few seasons?

Sudden answer: Not much.

Better answer: None.

De Laura got hurt in the first half of the Sun Bowl on New Year’s Eve, and lo and behold, that was his final curtain call at Wazzu.

Just a few days before the Cougs grabbed fiercely sought transfer Cameron Ward — record-setting quarterback from FCS power Incarnate Word — de Laura himself hit the transfer portal, and wound up at Arizona.

MAYBE we should have seen this coming, since new coach Jake Dickert has said he plans to discard the “run and shoot” offense imported to Pullman by his predecessor, Nick Rolovich.

De Laura excelled in that scheme, both in high school (St. Louis in Honolulu) and with the Cougs.

Perhaps even more informative …

Dickert hired Incarnate Word coach Eric Morris to be Wazzu’s offensive coordinator.

Cameron Ward had plenty of suitors — he said the final decision came down to Washington State over Ole Miss — after throwing for 4,648 yards (65 percent completion rate) and leading the FCS with 47 TD passes against 10 interceptions.

Ward isn’t exactly a little jitterbug QB, either, at 6-foot-3 and 225 pounds.

He’s obviously a guy who can stand in the pocket and run the Air Raid, which Dickert and Morris intend to reintroduce in Pullman.

ALL OF this player movement is totally legal under the new transfer portal rules.

And sure, we can hope the quarterback switch works out for Washington State.

Fair enough.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to like the portal; and specifically, I object to the idea of instant eligibility when an athlete changes schools.

Gonzaga’s Few seemed to make perfect sense while arguing on behalf of NIL (money for name, image and likeness for college athletes), and conceding that players should be allowed to transfer.

However …

“I don’t see what was wrong with having guys sit out a year before they become eligible at a new school,” Few said.

“Playing right away is just not the way to go about things, and it isn’t best for the athletes, either.”

I agree with Few.

Deciding to transfer is fine, for all sorts of reasons.

So, why not let those kids wait a year, make sure they’re caught up academically and socially, and THEN become eligible?

Despite all the money involved, this still shouldn’t be professional sports.

We’re too close to that already.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball which is published weekly during the season.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”