Recent Ohio State Happenings, Big Ten Data Shows Transfer Portal Impacts College Basketball As Much, If Not More Than Football

That’s the nature of living in the fifth-largest American city that’s never had an NFL football franchise, and the only of those five outside of Austin, Texas, to contain a nationally relevant college football powerhouse. It’s also the nature of living in a country where college football is exceeded in popularity (in terms of attendance and TV ratings) only by the NFL, the media attention that goes with that and the now highly-publicized nature of NIL’s influence and de facto free agency in regards to the pigskin.

But those Ohio State fans who pay attention to the coffee that follows the appetizer, entree and dessert that is college football season – college basketball – may have picked up on a certain phenomenon. 

The transfer portal has every bit as much impact and chaos on hoops as it does the gridiron. 

That’s true when comparing Ohio State's quiet spring football window to a basketball window with more moving parts than a particle accelerator, but it’s also true for the Big Ten as a larger case study.

NOTE: I wish I could expand this dataset to include a nationwide comparison, alas I am one person and these tables alone took me five hours to calculate using the extent of my Microsoft Excel knowledge, adding up and plugging in numbers by hand. By the same token, this data does not include Washington, Oregon, USC or UCLA, who are joining the Big Ten in a matter of months.

Am I partially calling attention to this fact to point out that I put in five hours of work for *checks notes* nine total lines of data in two tables and want the validation that applause for my efforts provides? Perhaps.

In each of the five major basketball statistical categories, the Big Ten has already lost at least 21.9% of its production from the 2023-24 season to the transfer portal exclusively. That includes 8,440 of the 36,417 points scored by its cagers (23.2%) and 525 of its 1,796 blocked shots (29.2%) to lead all basketball categories. The top two shot blockers in the conference – Rutgers’ Clifford Omoruyi and Ohio State’s Felix Okpara – are both set to play at new collegiate destinations next year.

All five basketball categories lost a greater share of output to the transfer portal than three of the four listed on the football side. Five starting Big Ten quarterbacks from 2023 jumped in the portal this fall or spring, including Ohio State’s Kyle McCord, so passing yards saw the biggest loss of any in either data set at 31.8%.

Circling back to Okpara, his story is the first piece of anecdotal evidence displaying just how hectic the transfer portal has been for Buckeye basketball. Okpara initially decided on a return to Ohio State, and announced as much publicly, only to hop into the portal 20 days later.

This isn’t a trend limited to Columbus. Minnesota point guard Elijah Hawkins, who ranked second in the conference with 7.5 assists per game, entered the portal this week after stating last month that he would return to the Gophers.

Then came perhaps the ultimate moment of realization for Ohio State fans: Not shooting guard Roddy Gayle Jr.’s entry into the portal, but his commitment to Michigan on Monday.

 

 

 

 

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Yes, it’s true that players have switched sides in the most heated of all collegiate rivalries before. Yes, it’s true that that rivalry doesn’t burn with the intensity of 1,000 suns on the basketball court the way it does on the football field. But a starter? The team’s third-leading scorer and second-leading passer? Truly uncharted territory.

One of the things that made college football’s portal cycle especially attention-grabbing during the winter was a recent rule that allows players 30 days to transfer after a head coach leaves a program. With Nick Saban’s retirement at Alabama, Kalen DeBoer’s move from Washington to fill that void and Jim Harbaugh’s departure for the NFL from Michigan – all moves that occurred either at the end of or after the first portal window – there was a lot more pilfering to be done outside the scope of typical transfer bounds, both in terms of players and timeline.

Michigan also went through a basketball coaching change this offseason. With the large caveat that it promoted its football coach, Sherrone Moore, internally and hired its hoops coach, Dusty May, externally, its cagers suffered much more in terms of portal losses.

Heavy defensive attrition hit the Wolverines’ football team, but their basketball squad lost top scorer, passer and stealer Dug McDaniel alongside top rebounder and shot blocker Tarris Reed.

Speaking of coaching changes, one occured at Kentucky as Mark Pope replaced John Calipari, which led to the loss of multiple five-star prospects for the Wildcats. One of those, center Aaron Bradshaw, fell into Ohio State's lap. D.J. Wagner, another five-star who picked up 9.9 points and 3.3 assists per game in 2023-24, is also on the move as seven total Wildcats have entered the portal since this window opened.

With the Buckeyes' football team thieving towers of talent from Saban’s former squad, landing Seth McLaughlin before the coach's departure, and Caleb Downs and Julian Sayin afterward, a comparison between Alabama football and Ohio State basketball in lost portal contributions seemed apt. Both went through a coaching change, after all. 

The Buckeyes’ basketball outfit lost a larger share of production in points, rebounds and blocks than the Crimson Tide’s football team did in any of the four football stat categories analyzed here.

This illustrates why the impact of the transfer portal on college basketball might actually exceed that of college football. When Alabama loses its leading tackler, Caleb Downs, that’s just one position of an 11-man unit that rolls depth beyond that. A minimum of 22 players from each team have a heavy influence on a football game. In basketball, that number rarely exceeds 10.

In basketball, the stars at the top of a team’s rotation are responsible for producing in most, if not all major areas of play. Ohio State can lose its starting quarterback, but that doesn’t affect its defense, running game (at least in McCord’s case) or even the weapons available for the next guy to throw to.

Between Gayle and Okpara, Ohio State lost a top-three contributor in each of the sport’s five most prominent stats. I’d argue there are no two players you could take from any football roster around the country that so holistically remove production from that school’s starting lineup.

So while headlines and stories sizzle about during the fall and spring portal windows of college football, remember there’s just as much steak following basketball season.