Jonathan Smith says no players have expressed interest in transferring

The college football landscape is already in a very weird place with NIL and the transfer portal still being fairly new additions to college athletics. Then you add in the fact that the NCAA is doing absolutely nothing to put constraints on either when it seems very obvious that adjustments need to be made for the good of the sports.

But there is a new trend in college football this season, one that I think is terrible for the sport.

Redshirting has been a common practice in college football for an extremely long time, long before the transfer portal and NIL were even thought of. And redshirting is a good thing when it comes to a player getting injured or choosing to sit out for a year when they are young and looking to gain a little experience. Fast forward to this season however and UNLV quarterback Matthew Sluka started a new trend of opting to redshirt midway through the season so he can enter the transfer portal.

As you may have heard, Sluka made this decision because of an NIL dispute, but other players throughout the country have followed suit. These players are playing in three games or less then choosing to redshirt the rest of the season so they can enter the transfer portal and not lose a year of eligibility. This is not how redshirting and the transfer portal are supposed to work yet here we are.

So now every coach in the country has to worry about if any of their players will choose to do this, and that includes Michigan State.

Jonathan Smith was asked about his players and their intent to transfer after the Spartans' loss to Oregon and thankfully this seems like nothing to worry about for them right now.

Chris Solari with the Detroit Free Press shared that Smith has not heard from any of his players regarding their intent to transfer. This is about as good of news as Michigan State fans could have hoped for, especially after three straight losses now, but in reality this probably is something we never had to worry about in the first place.

Yes I think Smith has created a culture where players want to stay and play for him, but we’d be silly to think zero players will ever transfer out under him. The reason however that makes this news not shocking is because Michigan State is six games in, meaning players who have appeared in a majority of these games can no longer save this season’s eligibility if they sit out.

There most certainly will be players who will transfer after the season, but there likely won’t be any that decide midseason to choose to sit the rest of the year. And that is just one small indication of the belief that this Michigan State team has in Smith and the program.