The rise of transient transfers: How college basketball's new era is reshaping the game

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — PJ Haggerty sat behind a simple table with a backdrop featuring the Kansas State logo behind him. The lights glared as dozens of television cameras focused in on him, eager to hear whatever the All-America guard might say.

He's expected to be the face of the Wildcats this season, one of the highest-profile transfers in the country — just like he was the face of Memphis last season, and Tulsa the year before that, and TCU for a minute that seems like a lifetime ago.

When the NCAA pried open the transfer window in August 2022, allowing players to flow from one school to the next without a redshirt year that had long held such movement in check, it changed the dynamics of college basketball. The introduction of compensation for name, image and likeness added another layer of complexity to it. Suddenly, entire rosters were changing with every offseason, and what was tantamount to free agency in professional sports had officially begun.

Now, there are dozens of players just like Haggerty across the college landscape this season. They can perhaps best be described as “transient transfers," players who are playing at their third and sometimes fourth school in four years.

“I always felt like if you take care of the name on the front of your jersey, the name on the back will always be taken care of,” Haggerty explained when asked about his college odyssey. “I feel like that’s what I live by. I’m just a team player.”

It's important to note that Haggerty isn't some malcontent searching for a new home each season because he needed another fresh start. The reasons for the moves mostly have been basketball-based, whether it be the system or coaches or opportunities that a program provided, such as playing this season in the rough-and-tumble Big 12 Conference.

TCU surely didn't want to lose the once-touted five-star prospect. Nor did Tulsa, where he averaged 21.1 points, or Memphis last season, when he helped lead coach Anfernee Hardaway's program to its third NCAA Tournament appearance in four years.

Besides, there are drawbacks for the players, too.

Each new stop means a new set of teammates and classmates. New coaches and friends. It means learning a new campus and city. It means new offensive and defensive systems and philosophies, to say nothing of new conference opponents.

It means packing and unpacking, and never quite settling.

And it can wreak havoc on academics. Rarely does an athlete's full complement of classes transfer from one school to the next, several administrators explained, and that makes keeping them on track to graduate — from wherever they might finally end up — a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, where athletic department counselors have to make all the pieces fit.

“All of us would prefer to wave a wand,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said, “and players can leave one time. The second time, they sit out. And as far as the rules, they'd all be established. We would know what they are. They would be enforced, and I think all of us would appreciate it. At the same time, we got into coaching because we want to help young men grow and earn a degree. We know that transferring four schools in four years is going to be harder to get a degree than transferring one time.”

Transient transfers can be found everywhere, from power programs to mid- and low-majors, and in almost every league in the country. But they are especially prevalent at places where there has been a coaching change, which is usually followed by an exodus to the transfer portal, leaving the new coach to rebuild a roster almost from scratch.

Take the case of Iowa, which fired Fran McCaffery and hired Ben McCollum from Drake. Eleven players ultimately transferred out of the program, leaving McCollum to replenish with a couple of incoming freshmen and a slew of his own transfers.

Bennett Stirtz, a potential first-round NBA draft pick, began his career playing for McCollum at Northwest Missouri State, then followed him to Drake and is now onto Iowa, his third school in the last three years. Cam Manyawu played his freshman season at Wyoming, then transferred to Drake and eventually followed both McCollum and Stirtz to the Hawkeyes.

Elsewhere in the Big Ten, Minnesota forward Jaylen Crocker-Johnson is on his third school after stops at Little Rock and Colorado State, and Southern California guard Chad Baker-Mazara his fourth after playing for Duquesne, San Diego State and Auburn.

Both believe the positives of their long and winding roads have outweighed the negatives.

“Because I feel like the programs I've been to are all great programs,” Crocker-Johnson said, “and the coaches recruited a good group of guys. Everyone loves to compete. Putting me around good people, it hasn't been that hard for me to adjust.”

While transient transfers stand at one end of the college basketball spectrum, an increasingly small collection of players remains at the other end, where they have spent their entire careers in one place. They tend to view things a little differently.

“With the transfer portal, people are struggling to find a home. I wanted to have a home that I can come back to,” said Nick Martinelli, who is entering his fourth year at Northwestern. "If I had left, who knows what I would have been today. It’s hard to be a transfer and try to pick up on the things and try to fit into the camaraderie of the team.”

Nate Bittle is an even bigger rarity: He's going into his fifth season with Oregon.

“We know the offense, defense, we know what coach (Dana) Altman wants,” he said. "With transfers, we can help them without coach having to talk to them about what they need to do. We’ve been around. We know what coach wants. Being in the program, like me, for five years, I’ve seen everything. I can talk to anybody on the team about what we’ve got to do.”

Does Bittle ever regret not trying somewhere new? Or is he happy with his decision to stay put all these years?

“I got a degree this last year from Oregon. I grew up two hours south. My whole support system, family, friends, everybody, is right there for me. They all come to games,” he said. "I dreamed of being an Oregon Duck when I was a kid, so I’m sticking it out.”

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Associated Press freelancer Rich Rovito in Chicago contributed to this report.

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