Scott Davis has followed Gamecock sports for more than 30 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective.

He writes a weekly newsletter that's emailed each Friday. To sign up for the newsletter, click here. Following is the newsletter for Friday, Jan. 14, 2022.

Scott also writes a weekly column that appears on Gamecock Central during football season.

I got my first Transfer Portal text message the other day.

It was a milestone, a historic occasion, such a monumentally fresh and unique development that I contemplated commemorating the moment by placing some sort of sticker on my iPhone that listed the time and date I’d received the text.

Since the advent of text messaging some two decades ago, I’ve been getting recruiting texts on the regular: “You hear about that linebacker that just committed to us?” and other such chestnuts of Gamecock fandom. But until this week, I’d never gotten a Transfer Portal text.

Getting it meant we’d entered a new era, one that actually began a few years ago but that seems to be coming into its own right now.

You know all about the NCAA Transfer Portal, right? It’s the place where college football players – and basketball players, and baseball players and other college athletes who decide they’re in the mood for a change of scenery – go to find a new home.

The Portal is a relatively newfangled development in college sports, and it’s added a new layer of intrigue to off-seasons that were already pretty packed with intrigue, what with recruiting and spring practice and the banquet circuit and everything else that keeps us tied into our favorite program even during the months when the stadium is empty.

As a result, we’ll soon have to refer to, say, 2015 as a PP Year (Pre-Portal), while 2021 and 2022 are AP Years (After Portal). During the PP Era, you pretty much knew who was playing for your team from year to year. You loaded up on newbies during recruiting season, and at the end of each season you lost a few dudes to the NFL, graduation or injury, but in general, you had a blueprint for what the roster would be going forward.

In the AP Era, it’s a Portalpalooza.

The roster may be changing by the week, if not the minute. You’re never sure if you should get too attached to a favorite player because he might be wearing a Mississippi State uniform next year. On the flip side, if there’s a Rutgers player that you like watching, don’t give up on the dream of him being a Gamecock just yet.

With the Portal, all is possible.

I got that “you see the action on the Transfer Portal?” text because South Carolina had a big week in playing the Portal.

A defensive end from N.C. State entered the fold. Then a safety from Central Michigan. Then a wide receiver from James Madison. It turned out the action wasn’t over yet, as Wake Forest running back Christian Beal-Smith announced he’d also be heading to Columbia. As always, the good folks at Gamecock Central can fill you in on everything that’s going on – I’d recommend you start here South Carolina Transfer Portal Tracker and here PFF breakdowns on the newest wave of transfer commitments.

I feel like throwing a Portal party, and you probably do, too. Of course, the Gamecocks inevitably lost players to the Portal, too, most notably quarterback Jason Brown. But when the Portal dust settles, it feels like the vibe surrounding this program will be one of upbeat positivity and possibility. This is starting to feel like a place that athletes with some options want to play for. That’s a different feeling than I had about the program a year ago, and the Portal is one reason why (so is winning seven games and the Duke’s Mayo Bowl in 2021).

How did we get here?

For years, players were all but locked into the universities they signed with out of high school. It was possible for an athlete to transfer, but they had to sit out for a year when they did unless they’d already graduated from the school they currently played for. In addition, many schools prohibited their players from transferring to certain places (usually conference opponents or rivals). In general, the system was geared to keep you where you were and protect the status quo.

That slowly changed in recent years, and in 2022, high-quality transfer players helped to decide the national championship game earlier this week. (You can learn more about the new transfer rules in this article The Transfer Portal Changed College Athletics in 2021, which gets bonus points for including a gloomy quote from a despondent Dabo Swinney).

Coaches seem mildly terrified of the Portal’s potential power.

Perhaps instead they might look to use it.

Assuming the Portal remains a fixture of college athletics going forward, there’s no doubt that it could change the way coaches fill out their starting lineups in the future.

If you’ve got a five-star true freshman running back on the roster and you expect him to help your team down the road, you might want to go ahead and make “down the road” right this second. That’s because today’s players want to play ball and they want to play ball now, and if they aren’t doing it, they might just decide that the Transfer Portal is worth a look. What’s the use of putting all of your resources and efforts into recruiting if you exhaust your energy signing a guy, only to watch him skip town after his freshman year in search of greener pastures?

Now it’s not enough to convince a kid to come to your school. You’ve also got to convince him to stay. That probably means playing him sooner rather than later.

It’s a “play to stay” world we’re living in now, and the coaches who learn how to adapt to the environment they now find themselves in will be the ones who keep their programs churning forward.

Are there downsides to the new rules? Sure. But if I’m being honest, I’m cautiously optimistic about the AP Era. I’ve never been a fan of keeping elite freshmen on the sidelines because of misguided loyalty to a veteran, or because “he’s not ready to help us yet” (how can a guy get ready to help you other than by participating in Southeastern Conference football games?), or because of all the myriad reasons coaches have manufactured across the decades to keep younger guys on the sidelines.

Let the kids play.

If not, the Portal awaits.

Tell me how you feel about South Carolina’s Portal additions or anything else by writing me at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com.