Despite increased complaints from fans about the NCAA needing to implement transfer restrictions, the issue may not be as bad as perceived. 

NCAA president Charlie Baker spoke with reporters Tuesday night at the NCAA convention and said that entry into the FBS transfer portal is down 23% from last year. The figure comes despite numerous big-time programs like Ohio State (33), Oklahoma (28), and Texas (24) having seen a high number of transfers this month.

On3 reports that the number of FBS portal entrants last cycle was 4,201, the most ever since the portal’s creation in 2018. For comparison, this year the portal reportedly has just over 3,000 entrants. Assuming more players enter the portal before the window closes on Jan. 16, Baker’s number appears to be accurate.

Baker attributed the decline primarily to the House v. NCAA settlement agreement; schools are now able to directly negotiate with their players and as a result, have had more success retaining them. This has been the case for high-profile players like Michigan quarterback Bryce Underwood, South Carolina quarterback LaNorris Sellers, and Ole Miss running back Kewan Lacy, who were all rumored to be considering entering the portal. 

The transfer portal has also drawn added attention because of its timing, with the Jan. 2–16 window directly overlapping with the College Football Playoff.  

In a press conference before the Peach Bowl, Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti said “[his] Oregon prep got cut a little bit short” due to having 13 transfer portal players visiting campus that day. The Ducks were also affected by the portal, having to convert a pair of defensive players to running back because of two players transferring and being unavailable for the game.         

The transfer portal will remain a talking point as long as thousands of players enter it each season. That said, with schools now better able to pay and retain their star talent, it appears the portal may have reached its max number of entrants. 

ESPN posted a strong number for its Monday-night NFL wild-card game between the Texans and Steelers. Whether that’s the last playoff game the Disney-owned outlet airs in that slot, however, remains to be seen.

The network said Wednesday it averaged 29.1 million viewers for the Houston-Pittsburgh game, a 30–6 blowout win for the Texans. The audience figure, including other Disney properties such as ABC, is up 15% from a Vikings-Rams game last year that averaged 25.4 million viewers in that time slot—though there are some difficult factors on both sides of the comparison.

Neither Monday-night wild-card game was competitive, with the Rams and Texans each racing out to big second-half leads. The Minnesota–Los Angeles game was also shifted to Arizona due to last year’s Southern California wildfires. The Texans-Steelers game peaked at an average of 33 million viewers just before halftime, suggesting an even higher number would have been possible with a closer score. 

The latest NFL viewership figure is also an emphatic coda to what otherwise was a weekend of historic viewership for the prior five wild-card games. Each of the other four involved networks recorded a series of milestones for their broadcasts, most notably Amazon, which set a new league streaming record for its exclusive coverage of the Packers-Bears game on Saturday night, averaging 31.6 million viewers. 

The Texans-Steelers game, tied for the second-best wild-card viewership in ESPN history, was also the final game in Pittsburgh for longtime coach Mike Tomlin, who left the franchise Tuesday after 19 seasons—none of them with a losing record. 

Contract Matters

That Houston-Pittsburgh contest could also be the final Monday-night wild-card broadcast on ESPN. As the league prepares to reopen most of its domestic media agreements this year, a separate, five-year term between ESPN and the NFL for those Monday-night wild-card games has now expired. Disney, which owns ESPN, is interested in extending it, as the slot fits right into its existing Monday Night Football rights—a package that enjoyed a banner regular season. 

ESPN posted its second-best season in 20 years airing MNF, and it averaged 16.5 million viewers when including all of its 23 NFL games, up 10% from last year. 

There will be competition, though, for the rights to that Monday-night wild-card slot. 

The NFL playoffs resume on Saturday and Sunday with the divisional playoff round, with the remaining teams going in with varying levels of rest after the wild-card games.

Rich Paul is wading into unprecedented territory by publicly suggesting trades that impact his clients and the teams they play on. 

The Klutch Sports CEO and longtime NBA agent suggested that the Lakers should trade Austin Reaves for Grizzlies forward Jaren Jackson Jr. on a recent episode of his podcast, Game Over with Max Kellerman and Rich Paul, which was released Monday by The Ringer. 

“If you’re building around Luka [Dončić] going forward, which they are, you need that anchor,” Paul said. “And Jaren doesn’t want to be a part of a rebuild.”

Reaves is repped by Aaron Reilly and Reggie Berry of AMR Agency, while Jackson is a CAA client; Paul has a vested interest in what happens with the Lakers because of his famous client LeBron James. 

Reaves is making roughly $14 million in the third year of a four-year, $53 million deal he signed in 2023. He is expected to opt out of the player option in his contract this summer and become an unrestricted free agent, where he could fetch a max contract for five years and $241 million. 

Jackson is in the final year of a four-year rookie extension worth $105 million that he signed in 2021, and it pays $35 million this season. Next year, he begins a five-year supermax contract worth $205 million. The 26-year-old has had an underwhelming season with his scoring average down roughly four points from last year. The two players could not be traded for each other without the Lakers adding more salary in a deal. 

“Memphis would definitely pay Austin,” Paul said on the episode. “He would become, probably, their point guard and leading scorer, for sure. But definitely their highest-paid player.”

Spokespeople for the NBA, NBPA, and The Ringer all did not immediately respond to a request to comment. Reilly did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

It’s not the first time Paul has publicly played GM. In December, as speculation ran rampant over Giannis Antetokounmpo possibly asking out of Milwaukee, Paul said the Bucks should demand rising Hawks star Jalen Johnson in return. Johnson is a client of Paul’s, and the agent admitted Johnson wouldn’t want to play in his hometown of Milwaukee. 

NBA agents tend to operate in the shadows and only see their names crop up publicly when a league insider is tweeting about the latest contract they earned for their client. 

The NBPA has guidelines for registered agents, though it’s not clear if any of them apply to Paul’s comments. In the NBPA’s guideline book, Regulation 8 states an agent could be disciplined for “Engaging in any other activity which creates an actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest with the effective representation of Players; provided, however, that this provision does not prohibit an Agent from representing two or more Players on any one Team.”

One team executive told Front Office Sports that he found Paul’s comments “insane and fucked up.”

But the executive added there isn’t much a team can do about it aside from asking Paul to not include them in his hypothetical trades. 

James quickly distanced himself from Paul’s comments after the Lakers’ 141–116 win over the Hawks on Tuesday. During the game, Reaves’s agent Berry approached Paul and talked to him about his comments, according to ESPN. 

“I think you all know by now, Rich is his own man and what Rich says is not a direct reflection of me and how I feel,” James told ESPN after the game. “I hope people know that and if they’re not sensible to know that, then I don’t know what to tell them.”

“AR knows how I feel about him,” James added. “All you got to do is look at us on the bench. Me and AR talk every single day. So, AR knows how I feel about him and I hope AR—or his camp—don’t look at me and think this is words from me are coming through Rich.”