Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
By Chris Marler
Expansion. Targeting. Portal. For the last several years the offseason of college football has been dominated by single words around the sport.
This year’s word: tampering.
To no one’s surprise, letting players transfer freely in a market willing to pay top dollar hasn’t exactly gone as smoothly as some envisioned. The NIL side of college football was supposed to fix the under the table cheating that allegedly went on for years. It was also supposed to provide opportunities for players that many had missed out on. Backups waiting two to three years for a chance of playing time, and overlooked high school recruits getting a chance to play big time college football after breakout years at smaller schools were supposed to be the celebrated positive changes.
On Monday, the NCAA sent to members a memo announcing that it plans to aggressively pursue tampering violators and impose “significant penalties.”
Will it really?
More in our weekly @On3 sports biz column from Indianapolis – https://t.co/gK1Ma7EKhO
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) February 26, 2026
Instead, an even more lawless bastion of greed took place.
On Wednesday, the NCAA finally seemed to grow a backbone. The Division I FBS Oversight Committee proposed three penalties for cheating, tampering and circumventing the rules by going to another school outside of the transfer portal window that opened and closed in January.
Dabo Swinney went on a massive rant against Ole Miss, Pete Golding, Rebels GM Austin Thomas for blatant tampering with Luke Ferrelli
Dabo just put Ole Miss on blast, saying Pete Golding offered him a $1 million contract while in class at Clemson.
“Like having an affair on your… pic.twitter.com/ivmndCCSDg
— Trey Wallace (@TreyWallace) January 23, 2026
This is something several GMs and player personnel staffs are already expecting and prepared for. “Ghost transfers” are expected in the spring, despite the removal of the spring portal window a season ago. In this scenario players would leave one school and enter another as a walk-on with walk-on status.
That would mean they wouldn’t be eligible for a traditional athletic scholarship at their new school, but they could still receive academic aid or grants. And because NIL deals aren’t publicly disclosed, whatever they earn through those agreements would remain private.
How broken is college football? The system hasn’t even been fully in place for a year, or through a full spring semester, and programs have already figured out how to exploit it.
It’s truly incredible.
Still, the NCAA will try to create guardrails to prevent any of this from happening. The proposed penalties were announced in a release from the organization on Wednesday. They are as follows.
- The head coach would be prohibited from all football (recruiting and on-field coaching) and administrative duties (team meetings) through the sixth contest of the season.
- The school would be fined 20% of its football budget.
- The school would be required to reduce the number of roster spots by five for the next season, regardless of the head coach’s employment status at the school.
FBS Oversight Committee’s recommendation for penalties against schools that add players outside of the transfer portal window.
Proposed penalties:
+ Head coach would be prohibited from all football (recruiting & on-field coaching) and administrative duties (team meetings)…— Pete Nakos (@PeteNakos) February 25, 2026
That is great in theory, but it creates two very important follow up questions.
- Are those penalties too stiff?
- Are they going to actually be able to implement them?
I can only provide an answer for one of those questions and it’s the former. Is missing half the season, losing five percent of your roster and/or facing a potential $3 million penalty (based on the percentage most SEC/Power 4 programs are spending on football from their revshare agreement) too much?
No. This sport is long overdue for a lot of things, and the first one is some guidelines. It appears that after years of taking their ball and going home, disappearing from their responsibilities like that deadbeat dad in Angels in the Outfield, the NCAA has finally returned to do something they haven’t in a very long time – their job.
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