How Michigan football stop its player exodus to the transfer portal
In the five years he has been with Michigan football, Andrew Stueber claims the fellowship among his teammates is as strong as he has ever seen it.
“I’ve never been closer to a group of men,” the right tackle said.
The camaraderie forged over the past 11 months has been one of the main ingredients in the recipe of success the Wolverines have concocted this season. The togetherness sparked a revival and transformed a program that finished 2020 with a losing record into one now competing in its first College Football Playoff.
“We've put on a clinic of that this year with our brotherhood, how we care about each other, how we play for each other,” center Andrew Vastardis said immediately after Michigan won its first Big Ten title in 17 seasons.
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A year ago, no one expected that. Last December, following the grim finality of a 2-4 season, the Wolverines plunged into uncertainty as they weathered a stream of defections. During a 70-day period over the late fall and early winter, Michigan saw eight contributors enter the NCAA transfer portal. Among the departures were former starting quarterback Joe Milton (to Tennessee) and 2019 leading rusher Zach Charbonnet (to UCLA). The losses were a continuation of a troubling trend: From 2018 to August 2021, 30 scholarship players left for another school.
At Big Ten media days in July, Heisman Trophy runner-up Aidan Hutchinson suggested “something wasn’t right about the culture” in previous years.
“I mean, I could go on about it, but I probably won’t,” the talented edge rusher said then. “Things needed to be improved. And I think we’ve made those changes in this offseason.”
Coach Jim Harbaugh, after signing a contract extension that halved his salary, overhauled his staff by bringing in six new assistants — almost all in their 30s. With younger coaches in charge, Hutchinson and his teammates immediately crowed about the new energy pulsating inside Schembechler Hall.
At the same time, they rallied around the idea that no one believed in them after the worst season of Harbaugh’s tenure.
“We've really had the mentality of Michigan versus everybody,” quarterback Cade McNamara said earlier this month.
The evidence of unity isn't just the player apparel adorned with that slogan or a recent team outing to catch the new “Spider-Man” flick. It has manifested itself in more tangible and consequential ways.
Since the beginning of the season, offensive lineman Nolan Rumler is the only scholarship player to enter the transfer portal, and he only appeared in two games since his July 2019 enrollment.
This is an encouraging development for a program that, due to admission standards that limit the Wolverines’ pursuit of incoming transfers, places a premium on player retention. Since the advent of the portal in October 2018, Michigan has added only five scholarship players from other programs and each was a graduate student with a blank academic slate.
“Being able to keep players here, and key players here that want to play and want to grind and succeed is something that's big,” Stueber said. “It’s very important to be able to build them how you want to build them for their success.”
It’s no coincidence then that Michigan’s most important contributors are all upperclassmen, including McNamara, Hutchinson, pass rusher David Ojabo, running back Hassan Haskins and cornerback DJ Turner.
Harbaugh has always valued experience, and as the Big Ten title game approached, one of the program’s mottos weighed on him.
“Those who stay will be champions." Harbaugh said. “(Wanted) to make that valid and that true.”
Now that he has, Harbaugh could receive some residual benefits. The victory over Iowa not only provided access to the College Football Playoff but also a potential roadblock to players contemplating a transfer. After all, who is going to leave a team when the sport’s greatest prize is still achievable? At a time when the portal has whirled into overdrive in other locales, the semifinal participants have combined for four scholarship players entering the transfer marketplace since the end of the regular season.
Ohio State, after losing to Michigan, has already bid farewell to five. Michigan State, meanwhile, has watched 11 exit East Lansing during the same period. With the possibility that Michigan's season could extend all the way to the Jan. 10 national championship game, entering the crowded portal at that advanced stage could be a dicey proposition, with thousands of Football Bowl Subdivision players already competing for a landing spot.
"It's almost like musical chairs," Spartans coach Mel Tucker said last week.
But no one on Michigan's roster has attempted to play that game since Oct. 1.
Winning has been a deterrent. But so too has the camaraderie Michigan has developed. This season, those two forces combined to fix issues within the Wolverines and keep players on board.
“That culture, that energy has really built a bond,” Stueber said.
And it has yet to fray in the age of the transfer portal, when nothing seems permanent.
Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @RainerSabin.