NIL, and its affect on collegiate sports, has been discussed quite a bit on this board. Also, recruiting and its potential pointlessness with the transfer portal have been topics of conversation as well. I wanted to join those conversations with a question: with schools increasingly being able to pay players, is there a future state where schools will punt on recruiting altogether and defer their recruiting budget to getting players through the transfer portal? Would schools optimize their funds by purchasing the services of known commodities rather than spend time on developing “lottery ticket” high school athletes?
A more specific way to look at this would be – why should we spend money (and time) sending coaches all around the country to scout high school athletes when we could use this money to buy the services of the athlete a year later after they have proven their ability?
This approach seems a bit cynical, and I’m not sold on it, but it’s also clear that recruiting is no longer the life blood of a college athletics program. There are many more variables. Certainly, one continued bonus of recruiting is the perception of a program’s health. This affects the quality of athletes that can be signed from both recruiting and the transfer portal.
What are other reasons that we will still care about recruiting in 5 years? What is the biggest downside with letting other teams sign and develop players just so that we can steal them after they show ability?
Utah @ 
UCF .
