College football transfer portal creates a ‘no-win situation’ for Penn State

CNN
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Penn State University plays its first game in the College Football Playoff in a few days and faces a shakeup in the quarterback room thanks to the sport’s far-reaching transfer rules.

Sophomore QB Beau Pribula, the backup to starter Drew Allar, announced Sunday night that he is entering the transfer portal and plans to leave the school he grew up rooting for even though the Nittany Lions are in the hunt for a national championship. Sitting behind Allar, who is one of the most productive quarterbacks in school history, Pribula wanted a chance to play somewhere else.

Unfortunately for Pribula, he didn’t have time to make that decision. Unlike in professional sports—where there are set start dates for free agency—the transfer portal windows allow for fluid athlete movement in college sports, and a massive amount of shuffling takes place during semester breaks in the academic calendar. That game happened to overlap with Penn State’s College Football Playoff push and forced Pribula to make a life-changing choice at an important time of the year.

“The current NCAA post-season model creates a challenge for student-athletes,” Pribula wrote the Xformerly known as Twitter. “The overlapping CFB playoff and transfer portal timeline has forced me into an impossible decision. After speaking at length with my family and coaches, it is with a heavy heart that I announce my intentions to enter the transfer portal and leave the team to explore opportunities elsewhere.”

It was a tough decision for Pribula, who grew up in Pennsylvania and said it was his dream to play football in Happy Valley.

Head coach James Franklin told reporters Monday that the situation is simply unfair to both the team and Pribula.

“I can give you my word: Beau Pribula didn’t want to leave our program and he didn’t want to leave our program until the end of the season,” Franklin said. “But the way the portal is and the timing of it and the way our team plays — and when you play the quarterback position, those spots fill up — he felt like he was put in a no-win situation. And I agree with him.”

Franklin said the way the sport is set up right now — with the most successful teams preparing for bowl games in December and the teams sitting at home trying to rebuild by recruiting transfers — is not in the athletes’ best interest interest.

The longtime Penn State coach said the sport may need to look into having a commissioner or someone outside the conference system to make decisions about what is actually in the best interest of the student-athletes.

“There’s just a lot of things that don’t really make sense,” Franklin said of the game’s current state.

“I’m worried about college football right now in general to be honest with you, and I think a lot of people are,” he added.

Pribula’s former teammates, who spoke to the press Monday, wished the sophomore the best of luck and expressed confidence that he would be successful wherever he went.

Allar shrugged off any potential negative effects on the team in preparation for Saturday’s game against Southern Methodist University, saying there isn’t much that can be done to change the situation.

“It’s just unfortunate that it has to be that way because obviously I know he didn’t necessarily want it to be that way,” Allar said. “And that’s unfortunately the landscape of college football right now — there’s not much I can do about it, just really abide by the rules that they’ve put in place, and that’s what it is, unfortunately.

“But again, he’s going to kill it wherever he goes and he’s going to have a really, really good year wherever he goes.”