THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Shopping close to home, and its impact on the transfer portal

Compared to the rest of the teams in the Big Sky Conference, Idaho’s football program lost an abnormally large number of players — nearly a dozen — to the transfer portal following last season.

But by and large, all but one were from outside the state of Idaho.

“I have a couple of hypotheses,” Idaho football coach Jason Eck said recently.

He has said it’s important to recruit the best high school players in Idaho and keep them in-state as Vandals — and that’s not just for PR reasons.

“I do think when you have more of a tie to the area, I think that can increase your chances of keeping a really good player who could have gone (in the portal),” said Eck, whose Vandals play their spring football game Friday at 6 p.m. at the Kibbie Dome in Moscow. “And not everyone’s leaving. I think Hayden Hatten would have had a big market last year after his ’22 season, if he had wanted to go into the portal, I think he could have gotten a pretty large Name, Image and Likeness deal. But he decided to stay. There’s some family economics; every kid is from a different background. Obviously a certain amount of money can mean a lot more to some family than a different family. … that plays a role in it.”

Hatten, a star wide receiver with NFL aspirations, is from Arizona, but has said many times how much he enjoyed being at Idaho, in part because the Vandals gave him a chance that schools closer to his home did not. So he’s a bit of an exception, as far as someone from far away staying at Idaho.

Eck noted that of this year’s recruiting class at Idaho, 29 of them are from Idaho, Washington and Oregon. The Vandals’ recruiting “footprint” is the area where players (and their families) are within driving distance of Moscow.

BACK TO Eck’s hypothesis …

“I think a value of an Idaho degree, especially for a young man who will live the rest of his life after football in the Treasure Valley, or in Coeur d’Alene,” Eck said, “I think the connections you get by coming to Idaho and becoming a great player … maybe could pay off over the course of your life much more than a one-time NIL deal your senior year. We want to keep making sure we can find as many guys close by.”

He points at Montana in general, and star wideout/kick returner Junior Bergen in particular. As the Griz made their run toward the FCS title game, and Bergen was a big part of that, it was natural to assume bigger schools would be interested in luring Bergen away from Missoula.

“But he’s from Billings (and was originally a Montana State commit), and he’s sticking around,” Eck said. “He’s building some capital in the future in the state of Montana, where everybody’s going to know him.”

By contrast, the quarterback who led Montana to the title game last year, Clifton McDowell, is from Texas, and previously played at Central Arkansas. After one season in Missoula, he re-entered the transfer portal and committed to Temple. But then he pulled out and there was some talk he might return to Montana, before he eventually committed to Prairie View A&M, his sixth school in college.

“I do think those guys who have some connection to the school growing up. I think that adds to the loyalty of staying,” Eck said. “Now, you can’t take guys that aren’t good enough because they’re local … I tell my staff, we can’t miss on a guy that’s good enough, who’s local. We’ve got to make sure we’re turning over rocks, (recruiting) small schools, stuff like that, if there is a guy who’s within a five-, six-hour radius of our campus, we’ve got to make sure we’re on that guy.”

IDAHO’S ROSTER of 121 currently has 31 players from Idaho.

Montana’s roster is 48 in-state kids out of 115 on the roster.

At Montana State, it’s 36 of 86.

“If you’re a great football player at Idaho, and you’re part of some Big Sky championship teams, and you want to live the rest of your life in Boise or Coeur d’Alene, I think there’s some value and some connections that your name, image and likeness will probably carry you over the course of your life,” Eck said. “No different than a great player at Montana or Montana State, who lives in Billings.

“We’re going to win some Big Sky championships here in the next few years, and those guys who do want to live in Boise or Coeur d’Alene (afterward), being able to wear an Idaho Big Sky championship ring around at those business meetings and things … that’s a great conversation starter to get you started in the business world.”

Is Eck guaranteeing a Big Sky title?

“If I’m recruiting a young man, yeah, in the next five years we’re going to win a Big Sky championship,” he said. “We were three points away this year.”

Even with all the star players the Vandals lost after last season, which ended in the FCS quarterfinals?

“I’m not guaranteeing next year, but I’m very confident that in the next five years we’re going to win a Big Sky championship,” Eck said.

UNLESS IT’S a trick play, you very seldom see two quarterbacks on the field at one time, obviously.

So if one QB emerges as the starter and stays there, the backups often look to leave.

At Idaho, Gevani McCoy earned the starting nod as a redshirt freshman, and led the Vandals to the FCS playoffs in each of his two seasons as starter, before entering the transfer portal and winding up at Oregon State.

His backup the last two seasons, Jack Layne, saw little action — except for against Idaho State in the season finale. In 2022, he guided the Vandals to a win in Pocatello that clinched a playoff berth. This past season, he threw six TD passes — all in the first half — against the Bengals.

Layne, now a redshirt sophomore, is the No. 1 quarterback this year.

All because he didn’t leave.

“I had had that worry in the past; if ‘Vani kept staying, if Layne would have been patient enough to wait his turn,” Eck said. “They were offset by one year. If ‘Vani would have finished his eligibility, Layne would have had one year — is he going to be patient enough to do that?

“Obviously that’s not an issue anymore, but we have a lot of confidence in Jack; he’s really shown it in his two starts, and played very well over the last two years. To me, our actions speak louder than my words, because we’re not going to see any transfer quarterbacks showing up on our roster … Montana loses their quarterback, and right away they bring in a transfer quarterback.

“We believe in (Layne), we believe in Jack Wagner, who played a little bit in that Idaho State game,” Eck said. “And two other quarterbacks on the roster will be competing this spring for the third job. And then we’ll bring in a good freshman, Holden Bea, and see if he can compete in the fall for that third job. We felt confident in that position that we didn’t think we needed to go look in the portal.

“We really want to build our program, as much as we’re capable of, at any position, if we lose one guy to the portal we’re fine, because we’ve built up the depth at that position,” Eck said. “Now our two starting corners went in the portal; it’s tough to prepare for that, and we did have to go look in the portal to get some corners coming in.”

The spring transfer portal opened April 16, and closes next Tuesday for underclassmen.

At many schools, a few players might leave at the end of spring ball if they see they’re not going to play where they are, so it will be interesting to see what happens at Idaho in the days following Friday’s spring game.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.