What if we had Transfer Fees for College Football? A stupid hypothetical scenario.

Occasionally, I feel like I need to write something partially serious. I know it’s strange when you see something coming from the Sickos Committee, and it's actually a little serious. I apologize in advance for being kind of serious, but this is an extremely hypothetical situation, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal. Everything I lay out will mostly be wrong math-wise and situation-wise anyway. You all likely know I am not that smart.

This feels weird to type, and the situation will more than likely never happen in reality, but I have to get this out of my head. It’s been stuck in my brain for a few weeks now. It combines two of my most passionate fandoms. College Football and European soccer. You may remember I wrote about potential promotion and relegation last off-season, What if there was Promotion and Relegation in FBS College Football? (a mindless off-season exercise).

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The current world of the Transfer Portal is *normally* players transferring from their team to bigger schools (Power 4) for a bigger opportunity and potential Name, Image & Likeness (NIL) deals. I will express here that there is nothing wrong with players transferring. This is the current framework of the CFB world, and we're not in any position to change anything in a meaningful way.

The reality of the situation at the moment is that many of the smaller schools are left scrambling to replace talented players via recruiting and the portal. The school and coaches spent their time and resources developing the player, and they're left holding an empty bag, likely having to start over again at that position.

However, there is a subset of the College Football World that feels smaller schools (Group of Five, FCS, DII & DIII, etc.) deserve some compensation for players using their right to enter the Transfer Portal.

Well, let me tell you about somewhere this actually happens in real life. European Soccer. How, you may ask? Or, hell, you likely already know.

Welcome to the world of Transfer Fees

Now, we know the current setup of College Football would never allow for something like this, but this is college football, and we spend soooooooooooo much time on hypotheticals. Normally the hypotheticals center around who would win in a hypothetical matchup in the College Football Playoff or how one school would fare if they played a certain conference schedule, so why not write about this one? I will poke holes in the hypothetical throughout this because I am not a fan of people yelling at me and telling me I am wrong. I get that enough in my real job anyway.

What is a Transfer Fee exactly, anyway?

Webster defines a Transfer as… I am just kidding. In Soccer aka Football (don’t yell at me for this), a transfer is the action taken whenever a player under contract (hey, we don’t have those in CFB) moves between clubs. It refers to the transfer of a player's registration from one association football club to another. Like, hey, I agree to transfer this person to your team. A negotiated transfer fee is agreed financial compensation paid from an interested club to the club that possesses the player's exclusive contracted playing rights.

Can you imagine this happening between a Sun Belt school and one in the SEC? ULM and Vanderbilt have come to an agreement on a transfer fee for their punter. Then, when a player moves from one club to another, their old contract is terminated, and the player and their new destination club will both negotiate on new contract terms. The newly acquired Vandy punter now gets a new contract with Vandy and likely some Nashville Hot Chicken, which is delicious. Now I’ve gone and made myself hungry.

It’s simple enough, and it is similar to a trade in professional sports, but in the American pro sports teams essentially trade existing player contracts and maybe sign an extension, etc.

How the hell would we set a transfer fee anyway? Should we allow schools to just openly negotiate with each other?

It would be insane to do that, but it could create some hilariously new rivals. All Ole Miss fans are now upset at Akron for asking so much for their defensive tackle in transfer fees? Internet boycotts of Goodyear Tires occur, and now we all worry for the safety of the Goodyear Blimp.

It’d really make this ridiculous sport even more insane, but now I am worried about the Goodyear Blimp. So for the Blimp’s sake, let’s create something that doesn’t exist here. We’re going to create the Transfer Portal Transfer Fee Committee. TPTFC is a silly enough acronym but serious enough for this hypothetical scenario. I made a badge for it, to make it less silly in my head.

We’re going to give the TPTFC full power over transfers and their associated fees. I know, having a strong governing body in CFB doesn’t ever happen and likely will not ever happen. But here, just here, we will grant this power.

How would they set up Transfer Fees?

I feel like there would need to be levels and tiers of transfers to match their fees. You have football at many different levels in the NCAA, from Division III up to FBS.

Would all levels need some sort of transfer fee?

Let’s sort through the levels of NCAA Football first.

• If you go from DIII school to another DIII school, I feel like there wouldn’t need to be a transfer fee there because basically all players are non-scholarship players.

• If you go from DII school to another DII school, I feel there could be some nominal compensation, but nothing too high. Honestly, I couldn't even give you a figure of DII athletic program budgets, but a NCAA Report indicated generated revenue ranged from $0 to $5.5 million. The median generated revenue was approximately $528,000 in 2021. Sure, you could get some compensation from here, but it would be minimal.

• If you go from an FCS School to another FCS School, this is where there are some large differences in funding. The range of revenue can go from $44,275,782 to $4,040,925 according to the 2022 USA Today Report. There could be some conference-to-conference differences too. Likely, you’d need some sort of compensation for a transfer here.

• If you go from Group of Five/Six to Power 4, there is a huge difference in revenue between the Ohio State’s at $251,000,00+ in revenue as compared to the bottom of FBS, ULM at $19,119,368 in revenue. 2023 USA Today report. This is where I think transfer fees would come into play the most, and our fictional TPTFC would need to set appropriate levels.

Also, I understand this is only revenue and not taking into factor expenses.

In 2023-24, the total number of NCAA football players across all divisions who entered the portal exceeded 11,000. So the TPTFC would be quite busy.

So how the hell would we set a price for the Transfer Fee?

I will try to keep finances to Division I entries to make it a little easier on me. I feel like these below are the most common transfers when someone is transferring up to a bigger school.

• FCS to FBS

• G5/6 to P4

• P4 to P4 (Maybe do Conference to Conference pricing here)

• G5/6 to G5/6 (Conference to Conference pricing here too)

I really am of the mindset that we just allow a free transfer when someone goes down from P4 to any level below. Basically, you leave the P4 to go down to the FCS/G6 level; those schools shouldn’t have to reimburse the P4 School.

So let’s set some levels in pricing that are totally wrong and maybe too much or too little money.

(You will likely yell at me for these values, because honestly I don’t see any NIL contracts in public to read and don’t know what to believe. I will accept this yelling at me, even though this is completely hypothetical)

• $10,000 -$15,000 Transfer Fee for FCS to G5/6. The FCS schools get something back, and the G5/6 FBS school should be able to afford this one.

• $50,000 Transfer Fee for FCS to P4. This is an unlikely jump, but it feels like it happens from time to time. The FCS school needs a larger amount of funds to replace what is likely a big loss for their team.

• $100,000 Transfer Fee for G5/6 to P4. For example, a G5 Freshman of the Year that a team built their entire offense around, nearly made a bowl game for the first time in over 10 years, has now decided to enter the Transfer Portal to make likely $100,000 or more in NIL with an SEC team. Yeah, that G5 team needs some funds to recoup their losses. (coming back to this shortly*) Really, if you think about it, this comes out to about 1/10th of the cost or a *buy* game from the Power 4 Team. (That seems about right price-wise. Or maybe not. I don’t know what I am doing here.)

• $200,000 Transfer Fee for the P4 to P4 transfer. This is if the school is not ok with the transfer. Just hypothetically, a school loses their starting QB to a bigger/better team in the same conference or another conference. We would set a lower level for G5/6 to G5/6 here too.

• $25,000 Transfer Fee for the P4 to P4 transfer. I would say $25,000 if the school is ok with the transfer. The P4 school still invested time in money, recruiting, training, and coaching, but they are ok with him leaving the team and a nominal fee is ok. We would set a lower level for G5/6 to G5/6 here too.

• Free Transfer for the P4 to any other level below transfer - This is likely a situation where the P4 School is ok with the transfer and no compensation would be needed. Basically, the school lets them walk to another school a tier down from them.

I feel this could put schools into a situation where they are rewarded for finding and developing talent and eventually lead them to a European soccer style of model that could really fit the College Football game quite well. Also, this could limit the crazy transferring of entire teams following their coach when they get hired away to a higher level job?

Can you give me an example of how this could be applied in the real world?

You could have teams with different play styles, developing players, while trying to win a G5 Conference or trying to make a bowl game at 6-6. This is a different way of thinking for the sport and I know we don’t like to think of players as interchangeable; you want them to stay on your favorite team their entire career, but the transfer portal has kind of made it this way for good and bad.

You remember the example of a G5 Freshman of the Year that a team built their entire offense around and nearly made a bowl game for the first time in over 10 years? That player was Ahmad Hardy for ULM. He helped ULM tremendously this year and just had a great season with nearly 1,400 yards rushing. He went into the portal and transferred to Mizzou. I hope Ahmad racks up thousands of yards and scores so many touchdowns at Mizzou. You have to feel bad for ULM, losing that key of a portion of their offense. It’s got to be a tough hit for the program.

However, a few weeks later, ULM then landed a 4 Star running back, D'Shaun Ford, who announced his ULM commitment during the 2025 Navy All-American Bowl. It’s a huge get for ULM because 4 Stars really don’t go to ULM basically at any time. During his commitment, D’Shaun said he wanted to be the next Ahmad Hardy. Does that mean he wants to be the Sun Belt Freshman of the Year? Does it mean he wants to show out in one year and then hit the transfer portal like Ahmad did? Does he want to be the focal part of an FBS offense? I don’t want to make any assumptions for any athlete, but the choice is ultimately up to them. But let’s say D’Shaun has an amazing year like Ahmad did and decides to test the portal to move up to a Power 4 school too.

Where does that leave ULM next year? As soon as this happened, transfer fees popped into my head. ULM needs to keep this going by recruiting 4 Stars, which, as a longtime ULM supporter and mentioner, seems very unsustainable, but maybe it could be easier with compensation from transfer fees? The great Bill Connelly had the same train of thought as myself. (I know that this tweet below says January 11th and yes, I have been working on this one for a while)

It seems like an extremely European soccer-style situation, and in my mind, College Football and European Soccer have so many parallels.

Well, you know I just did the transfer fees part for fun. I know this is hypothetical, and it will never happen. Others seem to agree with me there.

But it’s a fun hypothetical to break your brain in the offseason, right?

I wonder if any other small schools like ULM take this approach with or without the Transfer fees? Thank you for reading, and hopefully I don’t get yelled at by y’all too much for this silly nonsense of a post.