Former D1 coach Alex Swenson breaks down how the transfer portal and extra COVID eligibility have flooded rosters with 40+ players, shrinking spots for high school recruits. Schools now compete with transfers for the same positions, creating a bottleneck that will last years. Target schools that need your position, make a recruiting video, and reach out to coaches directly.
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Hey, team Alex here. Hey, thanks for joining me today. And if you're new to this channel, I used to coach and recruit at the Division 1 level. I have 11 years of experience and I'm here to help you reach the next level. That is what I do. And in today's video, we're going to be talking about three topics. The first one is the transfer portal. What that is and how that has totally transformed recruiting along with, and this is topic two, the eligibility that, that college athletes have gotten. They've gotten an extra year of eligibility this past year and how that has affected recruiting going forward. And what you can do. Topic number three, what you can do to help yourself go through the recruiting process and to give yourself or your son the best chance at playing the next level. Because the fact of the matter is it's gotten harder to be recruited to play at the college level. It was already hard. Only 7% of high school athletes go on and play college baseball and it's gotten harder. Now I think that percentage is going to go down, if you will, as far as six, five or four, whatever. It's going to be because of everything that we're going to be talking about today. But hey, if you get anything from this video today, you learn anything or anything that helps you, please select that like button that thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't already. All right, let's get into it. So let me give you a little background on how transferring has worked prior to this year and prior to the new rule, the new one time transfer rule that NCAA has established in 2021. So prior to this, you could transfer, you could definitely transfer to your, from your current university or college to another one. But there were consequences and penalties to that. And what those were is you would have to sit out one full year of competition and you would lose the year of eligibility one year of the four that you have. Okay. And for most, that was just not worth it. Okay. And I would, I would argue with them that, yeah, they're correct, it just wasn't worth it to leave. So most would stay put and they weren't. You wouldn't see a lot of people transferring around each year. But now with the new transfer rule, NCAA has said you can transfer in without penalty. You can transfer one time out of the four years that you can, you can compete and there are no penalty. You can start right away. So what does that mean for recruiting? What does that mean for you or your son in high school? What? Well, now we're competing against other Division 1 Division 2 or Division 3 athletes. Okay. Those slots that these coaches are bringing in each and every year, whether you're a 2022, 2023, 2024, now we're competing against other college athletes. So that has changed the landscape of recruiting and that's why I said it has made it that much harder. Okay, so college coach, you can now pick either Division 1 athletes or other college athletes that establish themselves. And high school athletes, now they're going to still bring in high school athletes because they need to, to build and create youth and continue to grow their roster as they go. But there's no doubt going to be limited. It depends on each school and school year. And this is why it's so important to, to make sure that you're targeting schools that are one in need of your position and that is a good fit for you athletically and you fit their athletic profile. Now let's get into the NCAA and how they gave back a year of eligibility to the kids from last year and how that's affecting us now. So when the NCAA decided to give back another year of eligibility to student athletes from 2020, so if they were a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior in 2020 and they lost their season, right, as Everybody did, the NCAA gave back another year of eligibility. So in 2021, they were still a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior athletically. Now maybe academically, they, they took all their classes online, as most people did, and moved on. They became a sophomore or junior or senior or even graduated from the university, but still have eligibility left. You'll see in the transfer portal that a lot of guys have graduated, but they still have another year of eligibility to play college baseball. So they're transferring to other universities to play with them or to get a master's. What this has created is a bottleneck of roster management. Schools and coaching staffs are just not in need as much as they normally would have been because they have a essentially everybody back. They might have lost a few here and there, but their rosters, you'll see on their website, their rosters are a lot larger than they normally are. Normally it's around 35, you're getting 40s, some in the 50s last year were there as far as this past year. And the thing is, these schools aren't going to be able to hold 40 or 45 guys on their rosters over the next few years. They're going to have to work their way back down to 35 and again. Hence, it's created a bottleneck of roster management of guys that they can bring on their rosters over the next couple of years. And on top of that, the transfer portal that we mentioned is division one athletes and high school athletes are competing for spots. Okay. And again, I want to reiterate, they're going to still be recruiting high school athletes. It's just going to be trickier when over the next couple of years, two or three years as we work through all this, it's going to work its way out. But the bad thing about it right now we're kind of in the thick of it and there's not. The fact of the matter is there's just not as many spots for high school baseball athletes this year and going into next year and the year after that. Alright, so what can you do to help yourself? Give the best, give yourself the best chance to play at the next level. Let's get into that right now. Be proactive during this recruiting process. Help yourself go through this process. Don't just sit back and think that college coaches are going to find you and you're not going to do anything. You are literally hurting yourself and not giving yourself the best chance to play at the next level. If you have that mindset of like, hey, some coach will just find me. I'm going to go to this tournament and I'm going to go off and somebody will be there and they're going to offer me. Guys, don't chase the offers. Chase the best fit, okay? Be open minded. Be open minded to division ones, division twos, division three, jucos. And there's an option that I don't usually bring this up and I'm actually going to talk about this in the next video is a post grad year. It might be a good fit for some of us moving forward. I'm going to get into the weeds of post grads and everything on our next video next week. So make sure you take a look at that. But on another note on the recruiting process is be proactive, meaning reaching out to schools, doing your homework on schools, finding schools that are actually recruiting your position, that are in need of your position. Okay? Having a good recruiting video, going to certain showcases and camps and tournaments that are worthwhile, that you're not wasting your time, money or energy going forward. Do your homework. This does take work guys, and don't be afraid of some work. This will help you. Good work gets you to where you want to be. So make sure that you're willing to do that. And if you're not willing to do that, this is not a good fit. As far as you playing at the next level or you pursuing it, you might want to stop and just focus on your academics. But hey, if you have any questions, please comment down below or email me. I'd be happy to answer and help any way that I possibly can. Hope to see you in the next video. Take care.
