What Gives with Transfers in Morgantown?
In past years, open transfer “season” saw two main time frames. First, teams lost players in the four weeks following the end of the season. Next, teams lost players in the four weeks following the conclusion of Spring camp. This year, while there is still a slow trickle of transfers compared to the post-season time frame, more and more transfers enter the portal at random times. Morgantown is no exception. Indeed, West Virginia is seeing an exodus this off-season that leaves fans wondering a simple question. What gives with transfers in Morgantown?
Brief Summary of the National Picture
We provide regular transfer portal updates on the national level through the off-season. Our last such update can be found here. Those numbers have changed since that writing. We plan to run our next update in the next couple of weeks. As of all portal entrants through March 19, we count a total of 889 student-athletes from the Power Five Plus (Power Five plus Notre Dame and BYU) institutions. On average, then, each team loses 13.5 players to the portal. Over the first three years, the average was 11.2, and that figure included post-Spring and Summer transfers. We can reasonably expect the number this season to grow.
As of March 19, WVU fans witnessed 20 players enter the portal. This number certainly represents a well-above-average figure. That said, it is still not the worst in the nation. Indeed, 11 others teams have lost 20 or more players to the portal this off-season. In other words, nearly 20% of all Power Five Plus schools have lost as many players to the portal as West Virginia.
We have not looked at every starter for every game for every team over the last several years, but we note that at least six teams lose seven or more players that have started in multiple games over the last few seasons. West Virginia, of course, is one of those teams. That said, they are not the only team in the group. And at least a couple of teams in the group won more games than the Mountaineers.
So What Gives Then?
Regardless of the comparison to other teams across the country, Mountaineer fans are still in a state of shock. Comments across social media spell doom and gloom. Fans find unity in the question: what is the one thing that unifies these transfers? What gives with transfers in Morgantown? They want a singular reason and a single thing to blame. The fact is, however, far more complex than that one soundbite they crave. That’s not how things work.
Just think back to the last time any of our readers made a major life change. Maybe that was a job change, a big move, a breakup, a divorce, a marriage, a home purchase, or any number of things. Chances are you did not just have one reason for making that change. And if you ask a dozen people who made job changes why they did it, you won’t even get the same reason across all of them.
What gives with transfers in Morgantown, then? Well, that is not an answer capable of being reduced to a single sentence. There are some in the portal who left because they were either removed from the roster (Tavis Lee) or walk-ons looking to showcase their talent elsewhere or get more playing time (Kaulin Parris). Some players left for a combination of bigger NIL opportunities and perhaps interference by former coach(es).
Some players left because they were buried on the depth chart. In fact, this is your biggest group of transfers. Indeed, guys like Parker Moorer, Avarius Sparrow, Eddie Watkins, and many others. There are at least 10 transfers that fit this bill. Others, like Jarret Doege, were basically begged to leave by the fans. Those who have been interviewed have said the exact opposite of what fans seem to want to believe: that there is a huge culture problem in the locker room. Sure, some players (Sam Brown, for example) might have been misfits for the culture.
So is There a Culture Problem?
Even if there were a handful of such players, that does not mean there is a massive culture problem in the locker room under Head Coach Neal Brown. Think about a workplace you may have left recently. You may not have fit well with the culture, or you may have fit better elsewhere. That does not mean, however, that the culture you left was bad or that the culture you joined was good, at least not by any objective standard. All it means is that subjective to you, one culture worked better. Why does this same standard not apply to student-athletes, then?
From all the interviews we’ve read and tweets we’ve filtered through, we see only veiled suggestions at problems echoed by a small handful of former players. This is far from the type of evidence we would see if there were a wide-scale culture problem. We have seen those before. Think about Maryland a few years ago, or Todd Graham‘s career (at multiple places). There, players were not shy about airing that laundry. Even in Morgantown, we saw a contingency of players (more than half a dozen) point to an issue with Vic Koenning.
In this era, players have not been shy about blowing the whistle. We have not seen that here. Indeed, we have seen quite the opposite. In some cases, Brown may have been a bit too loyal at times to players.
Transfers Aren’t Even a “New” Normal
Let’s not forget, of course, that a transfer “problem” existed at West Virginia since at least the tenure of former Head Coach Dana Holgorsen. His teams regularly lost a dozen players every season to transfer or unexpected attrition before the transfer portal and the waiver of the one-year waiting period were active. Take a look at the roster between 2017 and 2018 as an example. While there are a dozen transfers between those two seasons, there were some big names there.
Lamont McDougle played himself to a freshman All-American nod and quickly departed the school after that. Granted, he has not done much since (and has transferred multiple times now). That said, he was a starter who still decided to leave. Take a look at Reggie Roberson. Not content to wade through the crowd in front of him at receiver, he transferred to SMU where he finished with over 2,700 receiving yards and 23 touchdowns. No, this is not a new thing. It just has a “fancy” new name and has become easier to track.
So what gives with transfers in Morgantown? Well, the volume has increased this season; that is certain. That said, transfer leaving is not new. It is also not isolated to West Virginia. Again, we cite schools like Indiana. Hoosier fans lost over 35% of their maximum scholarship allotment in a single season. Starters leaving for “bigger and better” opportunities is also nothing new. That, too, is also not isolated to Morgantown.
