116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Fran McCaffery: Having transfer portal open during postseason basketball is ‘ridiculous, idiotic’
Iowa men’s basketball coach believes players should be paid, but ‘you can’t get paid and be a free agent at every point in time’
IOWA CITY — Iowa’s Fran McCaffery believes the transfer portal was “nuts anyway.”
Add the fact that the portal is open while many teams still are playing postseason basketball — either in March Madness or, in the case of Iowa men’s basketball, in the NIT — McCaffery believes it is “another ridiculous, idiotic move.”
“The portal shouldn’t be open now,” McCaffery said. “I don’t know what went into that thought process. People that have no idea what they’re doing. But it’s open and … we deal with it.”
The transfer portal window opened on Monday and will stay open until May 1. That means a team playing in the national championship game would still be in season for the first three weeks of a crucial 45-day window of the offseason.
That being said, McCaffery did not show any objection to Iowa guard Dasonte Bowen entering the transfer portal during this period. Bowen has been out with a season-ending injury since mid-February.
“Dasonte Bowen is one of the finest people that I've coached in 41 years, and I would do whatever I can to help him find a place that works for him,” McCaffery said of the second-year guard from Boston. “He's one of my favorites ever.”
As for the transfer portal as a whole, though, McCaffery described it as an “absolute mess” created by the NCAA — “the organization that’s supposed to make sure that there isn’t a mess.”
“I think we can all agree that they’re no longer student-athletes, they’re professional athletes,” McCaffery said. “And that’s OK. They deserve to be paid. NIL is a good thing. … But until we have a two-way street, which is, ‘OK, you get paid, but you have a contract,’ you can’t get paid and be a free agent at every point in time. That’s just completely idiotic to think that that situation would work.”
Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com
Sign up for our curated Iowa Hawkeyes athletics newsletter at thegazette.com/hawks.
Daily Newsletters