What I Know, What I Think, What I Wonder — The Quarterback Edition

I know that quarterback turnover has always been one of my favorite things about college football. The possibilities for so many different programs rise and fall with whoever is taking the snap. Things have been kicked up a notch with NIL and the transfer portal, however. Quarterback has always been a completely different animal when it comes to patience and transferring, but so many quarterbacks and their circles now view patience as lost money.

I think choosing a school for a big up-front guarantee ignores the bigger money that comes over the summer and into the fall. Also, cars are no longer a perk – they’re expected. Like an employer saying two weeks’ vacation is a perk. It’s not a perk if everybody provides it.

I wonder if everybody involved – the McCords and Ohio State – is pretty much okay with this decision. McCord can go get a new start at a place that definitely wants him, and Ryan Day can move forward with more information and a better ability to maneuver the quarterback position in a way that better suits the program for short-term and long-term success.

I know that the specialization of quarterbacks has been as big a problem in all of this as NIL and the transfer portal. For the quarterbacks who have had personal coaches since they were 10 years old, they have had a plan put in place with annual mile markers all along the way. And when they get to college, the signs look like this: Mile 1 – Compete for the starting job; Mile 2 – Win the job; Mile 3 – NFL.

I think it is ironic that for as nomadic as Dylan Raiola has been, he may ultimately end up at what has always been home.

I wonder what 2005 Troy Smith could have commanded on the open market. I also wonder how Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer would have handled the transfer portal and NIL. What about JT Barrett or Cardale Jones taking an NIL opportunity elsewhere in 2015? Could that have been addition by subtraction regardless of who left? Could that have been the difference in making the 2015 offense as good as it should have been?

To read the rest of this extended edition of What I Know, What I Think, What I Wonder, you can click here, but you must be a premium subscriber. Additional topics include Kyle McCord’s departure, what it means now that blue bloods are losing starting QBs to the portal, the love of up-front money, McCord’s decision, OSU’s thoughts on that decision, the lack of patience at the quarterback position, Dylan Raiola’s decision-making process, transfer portal cautionary tales, and much more.

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