Not so deep, but a Friday thought dump
What is this? This is just a Friday afternoon thought dump. You are encouraged to share your thoughts in the comments.
I’m going to start with Gopher hoops.
A week ago, Pharrel Payne, Josh Ola-Joseph and Braeden Carrington all announced they intended to transfer, meaning the class of 2022 was a wash. Cam Christie and Dawson Garcia were rumored to be getting significant offers to transfer, leaving just Mike Mitchell and Elijah Hawkins from this past season’s roster.
It is impossible to maintain any sort of program consistency when you are almost completely rebuilding your roster every other year. Fortunately, Garcia announced he’s returning and there’s hope that Parker Fox and/or Carrington are also going to return.
But this leads me to Ben Johnson.
I’m a little surprised how quickly the online conversation has turned into how Ben Johnson is clearly over his head and is not the right guy to navigate this new world of college sports. I’m not really sure this is a fair criticism that’s grounded in anything objective.
Everybody is dealing with this and I mean everybody. Players are primarily leaving because they are unhappy with playing time or they are wanting more money than their current program can offer. If someone is leaving because they can get more money than they can get at Minnesota, I fail to see how that is Johnson’s problem. I certainly don’t see how a different coach is going to be able to solve that issue.
Personally, I was very impressed that Johnson was able to keep last year’s roster fully intact after what had to have been a miserable season. He kept the core and made great additions of Mitchell and Hawkins. He then guided a team that was dramatically improved and were inching toward bubble conversation in February. A level of success that nobody imagined when the season began. By all accounts, Johnson did a really nice job after last season.
He isn’t winning any hardware, but he’s navigating this challenging new environment well.
I’m potentially going to work on a piece looking at all of the transfers who left and who was brought in, to see if maybe we’ve been actually been winning in the portal. I suspect that would be the case, especially if we eliminate those who transferred immediately when Johnson took over after Pitino was fired.
The Portal and NIL…
While I agree with the general sentiment that these things combined are not at all good for the sport, I do think that maybe there is a little of Chicken Littling going on over the last week or two.
On the one hand, good for the players. If a kid can transfer to make himself several hundred thousand dollars when he has no realistic chance of playing professionally…good for him. Do it. And every online commenter who complains about loyalty would do the same thing if given the opportunity. That’s real money that can help set them up for the rest of their lives.
Something has to be done with the system to make it fair. People are genuinely losing interest in college sports. This is going to be a problem.
BUT, I’m not convinced that it is really ruining the sport like people think it is. It is NOT impossible for middling P5 programs to win. NC State and Alabama not basketball bluebloods who are only in the Final Four because they were able to buy the best players in the portal. Kansas bought the best players a year ago and they are watching the games on TV too. In fact Bama had to bring in nearly an entire new roster and managed to piece together a really nice team.
Tennessee brought in a kid who was 2nd team All-Big Sky a year ago and he turned into the SEC Player of the Year. I can assure you that he was not on a list as one of the top 10 available portal kids a year ago, but he was pretty damn good for the Volunteers.
The point is that coaching and recruiting still matter. The blueprint for winning may look different than it did a decade ago, but winning can still be done by teams that don’t have Duke or Kentucky on their jerseys.
The blueprint might mean hanging on to your core for 2 seasons instead of 4, but you have to figure out a way to make that work. It is possible.
Moving on to football.
Blake finally returned from his mental health sabbatical and profiled a few nice incoming recruits for the football team. I really like this safety and defensive lineman that have verbally committed. And we have our quarterback for the 2025 class, a former Washington commit who is not all in on the Gophers.
Speaking of NIL and transfers, the football team did a great job of keeping together their key pieces and it is time to start getting excited about this team.
It is also worth noting that the football portal will get live again when spring practices are finished. Hopefully nobody significant is lost.
Lastly…it is baseball season!
Home opener for the Twins yesterday and Seibert Field opener for the Gophers today against Illinois.
The Gohpers are still struggling, but seem to be improved over last year. They did manage to win the opening game of their series at Iowa last weekend.