Let’s not be hypocrites regarding the NCAA transfer portal

I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with the NCAA transfer portal, a game-changer in college athletics that can be amazing and awful at the same time.

Players should have the ability to seek other options if they’re unhappy or the chance to follow a dream if they’ve earned that right. Coaches can hit the escape button anytime they choose, either for a fresh start or a more prestigious gig, so why should athletes be restricted from doing the same?

What bothers me, especially since the advent of the one-time transfer exception, is the possibility of tampering. If Program A needs to fill a roster hole and a player from Program B is a fit, all it takes is a little behind-the-scenes maneuvering (or a more overt approach) to make that happen.

How Kamari McGee is finding his role on Wisconsin men’s basketball team

The collateral damage to mid-major programs makes me uncomfortable as well. Coaches at that level can pour time and resources into recruiting and development only to see their best players bolt for something bigger and better.

These mixed feelings of mine will collide Tuesday night when the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team hosts UW-Green Bay at the Kohl Center. For Kamari McGee, who transferred to UW after playing one season with the Phoenix, it’ll be the first game against his old team.

McGee averaged 11.6 points while appearing in all 30 games last season, including 21 starts. He’d be a centerpiece for a program that desperately needs those types of players in its third season under Will Ryan, who was hired during the COVID-19 pandemic and is 13-44 overall and 0-2 this season following blowout road losses to Indiana State (80-53) and Georgetown (92-48).

So, yeah, I feel bad for Ryan, the son of coaching legend Bo Ryan, and a Green Bay staff that includes former UW player Freddie Owens.

And happy for McGee that he’s been given the opportunity to play in the Big Ten. Some patience will be required on his part: After having the keys to the car in Green Bay, he’s well down the passenger list with the Badgers. He played 8 minutes in a 26-point win over South Dakota and 2 in a 10-point victory over Stanford.

“No ill feelings,” Will Ryan said Monday, “it’s just we would have liked to have coached him a little bit longer and we wish him nothing but the best of luck — just not against us, right?”

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UW coach Greg Gard was in a weird spot last spring when the transfer portal carousel started spinning and left the Badgers with a need at backup point guard after Lorne Bowman left the program. McGee didn’t have any high-major offers coming out of Racine St. Catherine’s High School and is undersized, but he made the Horizon League All-Freshman team in 2021-22 and fit what UW looks for from a character standpoint. Adding an in-state player, particularly one from southeast Wisconsin, checked another box for a program that has had trouble consistently landing talented players from inside the border.

Still, I wondered if there was any hesitation on Gard’s part to add McGee. Gard wouldn’t be in this job if not for Bo Ryan. He’d helped coach a freshman team in Platteville nearly 30 years ago that included Will Ryan. Owens and UW assistant coach Sharif Chambliss, a Racine native just like McGee, had been teammates with the Badgers.

Did Gard have any reservations about signing Green Bay’s best player, or is this a case of all being fair in love, war and the transfer portal?

“I think you really can’t emotionally caught up in that because we’ve had guys go in the transfer portal and we’ve taken guys out of the portal,” Gard said at his weekly news conference. “I learned really quickly, that’s just the landscape we’re in right now, so don’t get caught up in why somebody’s leaving, whether they’re leaving, where they’re going. …

“Kamari just wanted a different opportunity and wanted to try to play at a place like this.”

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Which, again, is perfectly fine. But let’s now acknowledge that we shouldn’t be hypocritical as reporters, fans or even coaches.

The Kamari McGee Bowl on Tuesday comes on the heels of Badgers tailback Braelon Allen addressing rumors which surfaced last week that he might be transferring out of the football program after this season.

Allen denied contact with other schools, and UW coach Jim Leonhard said after a loss to Iowa that “teams are tampering with other people’s players.” I can only imagine the outcry if Allen leaves the Badgers to play for Southern Cal or Michigan, two programs prominently mentioned as potential landing spots.

But think about it: Allen would have a much better chance at winning a national title with either the Trojans or Wolverines. His bank account likely would get a big boost as well, because it’s not a stretch to say that USC and Michigan donors will be willing to outspend their counterparts from UW in the Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) cash grab.

In other words, Allen would be leaving the Badgers because he believed the grass was greener somewhere else. Or exactly what McGee did last spring when he packed his bags and moved from Green Bay to Madison.

“I think that’s why they created the transfer portal, so when a kid does go in the portal it gives everybody an opportunity,” Chambliss said last month when I asked him about the decision to pursue McGee, making it clear in his next sentence that UW shouldn’t be accused of poaching players off other rosters just in case anyone had any ideas about that. “We ain’t picking nobody from nowhere. If they decide to go in the portal and that means they’re opening their decision and we think they’re a fit, we’re going to probably try to talk to them and see where it goes from there.”

Tampering is a big no-no and, if caught doing it, schools should be punished by the NCAA to the fullest extent. But when transferring happens more organically, fans need to decide which side of this argument they’re taking.

Are you happy for McGee? That’s a perfectly natural feeling. Just don’t cry foul if some future star has one great season for Gard and the Badgers before deciding his best path to the NBA is through Duke, Kansas or Kentucky.