With the April portal window not far off, I continued my quest to learn as much about transferring and the name, image and likeness money that is changing the nature of college football. To do that, I had a lengthy conversation with a Director of Player Personnel at a mid-major not far from me.

We had a lengthy discussion on the ins and outs of the transfer window. Here are a few highlights from our conversation.

Up and down: I asked if it’s harder to recruit a P5 player to come to a G5 school or to lure an FCS player to an FBS mid-major. He said it’s harder to pull from P5 because such a player hates to switch “just because of the logo. Everybody is attracted to a logo at TAMU, so they would be harder to get.” Still, “the deciding factor is their playing time. If they’ve been at PVAMU three years in a row, they’re gonna be harder to get. Playing time at their old school is the determinant. A P5 who has played a lot is gonna be harder to get, unless the FCS guy has played a significant amount.”

Pecking order: The most valuable players tend to be offensive linemen, then pass rushers, he said. For the most part, start on the outside of both sides of the line for the most valuable players, then work in for players of less stature. For example, defensive tackles are valuable, but not as valuable as defensive ends. 

Looking for certainty: I asked if players in the portal might be ripe for a position switch. The response was that not only would a player not be receptive, but the coaches on staff wouldn’t, either. “Position switches would be a hard sell to the position coach,” my friend said. “When you get a portal player, you want him to be plug and play. That’s a one-off experience. If you coached him at your previous school, maybe, but usually no.”

Technology helps: The software packages sold to today’s college football team can be pricey, but they’re also diverse and directed toward every corner of the recruiting game. For instance, when I asked one DPP how he avoids publicizing the offers he makes, he said it’s impossible. “Everything is so public anyway, and there are  services that automatically scrape the Internet,” he told me. “You could get an email every single day telling you who (schools) offered, and it’s all based off Twitter.”

Minefield: It’s a dangerous game when you strategically offer a player, hoping bigger schools will flock to him. “We won’t offer people unless we are interested in them,” said the same DPP. On the other hand, “there might be a guy who may not be interested in us right now, but he might fall to us for academic reasons, so we offer him.” Now, that academic info is something that has to be gathered first-hand, which, again, requires manpower. 

A surprising turn: I asked one DPP at a mid-major if high school recruiting was now solely the bailiwick of schools like his, while big schools could sit back and harvest them once they proved themselves. He said it was the reverse: the Ohio States and Alabamas of the world can spend big dollars on five-star recruits and reap their big seasons from the start, then fill in with transfers when a recruit doesn’t work out. 

An inconsistent workload: Trying to predict how many volunteers the standard mid-major has on the personnel team is really hard. Having spoken to two schools this week, one said his team has 5-6 volunteers, while another DPP said he put together his entire pre-portal board single-handedly. While no two boards have the same level of detail and volume, that’s still a lot of work. 

Transfers won’t be the only thing happening in the football world in April. There will also be plenty of movement in NFL front offices starting in late April and continuing through July. We’ve been talking about that at Inside the League. Want even more? Make sure you register for our weekly newsletter, the Friday Wrap. 

This week, I got a chance to sit down with the transfer portal team at a mid-major school. Over an hour-long conversation, the half-dozen members of the personnel department had some interesting things to say. Here are a few highlights.

• There is no ceiling for offensive tackles in the portal. If they’re healthy and have starting experience, there is almost no limit to what schools will pay. This is probably the one recurring theme.
• Facilities are important, but less important than they were in the pre-NIL days. It will be interesting if schools stop beefing up their locker rooms and field houses and start pouring it into player compensation. “There are fewer kids asking if there’s a barbershop and a waterfall in the locker room,” is how one official put it.
• Also, players still care about things like food. You better be doling it out if you don’t have mountains of NIL cash. I’ve heard of one West Coast school that feeds all its athletes — from gymnasts to football players — in one cafeteria. Once the food runs out, it runs out, and it doesn’t matter if someone on the rowing team went back for seconds while football practice ran long.
• One other thing — if you’re at a mid-major and can’t match others’ offers, you better have pretty liberal admissions policies. 
• There are still no NFLPA-licensed contract advisors — or even non-certified ones — cornering the market. The DPPS and GMs I speak to say they are still not seeing the same faces every time. Reps are also not (yet) common on official visits. This is a tremendous area of opportunity for an NFL agency. 
• If you’re at a school in Florida or Texas, you have a tremendous advantage, even if you’re not at a P5 school. Players who leave and don’t get what they wanted usually want to return home.
• Coaches are getting more aggressive about contacting players at other schools. That’s especially true if they have a prior relationship, i.e., the coach leaves one school for another one, then starts trying to lure the kid at his old school to his new school. That’s becoming more common. The problem is, if a school tried to make a fuss about this, the player’s not normally going to go against his coach.
• Here’s a fun fact. Texas Roadhouse is headquartered in Louisville, Ky. I know this because the Cardinals aggressively court their corporate sponsors, which is one reason they have a well-stocked NIL budget. The school offers naming rights to the film room, the weight room, everything. For almost 20 years, Cards fans have been able to purchase bottles of Maker’s Mark with the Louisville logo. There’s even a Texas Roadhouse Student Center at Louisville; I’ve also heard the chairs in the meeting room have the TR logo.

If this topic interests you, make sure you check out last week’s edition of the Friday Wrap, in which I talked to 10 college personnel directors to get their respective takes on the abuses of the transfer portal. It’s here. To register for future editions of the Wrap, click here.