Training, Evaluation, and Scouting Considerations in the Portal Era (Part 2)

You can’t turn on ESPN or go on Yahoo Sports without coming across discussions of the transfer portal or NIL. In 2021, the NCAA reshaped the entire trajectory of college sports by changing longstanding rules concerning pay for play and college free agency, deciding that student athletes should have the ability to transfer from one school to another without eligibility consequences. These policy shifts caused a tornado of new issues swirling through teams and left chaos in their wake.

The resulting chaos created financial equality, as the players are now able to earn their market value just like the coaches. Simultaneously, we can’t talk about NIL and its effect on college sports without involving the transfer portal; the portal came as a reaction to the ever-changing coaching carousel and now gives players the same opportunities to leave for greener pastures. A college NLI (National Letter of Intent) went from being a binding, four-year contract to a month-to-month agreement where it is beneficial to keep all parties involved happy. No situation is permanent anymore in college athletics—for coaches and players alike.

The big business side of college sports has now shined a light onto how many universities operate like Fortune 500 companies. This harsh—and at times cutthroat—world has emerged due to the ability to lose valued members quarterly to the portal and the pressure to win now.

College sports is and always will be a business and transactional, and the NCAA has assured that the players can benefit and operate in a similar structure as coaches. Part one of this two-part series dove into some of the complex problems involving team chemistry, culture, and discipline in a new NIL and portal era. In this article, I will focus on:

• How yearly training is a thing of the past.
• How networking with other strength and conditioning coaches can aid you with transfer players coming into your program.
• Ways that athlete evaluation is critical for proper planning.

Yearly to Monthly: How the Training Schedule Is Affected

The new reality of training college athletes is one where you have to stuff about three years’ worth of training into six months. The free agency of college football has seen players added to rosters six weeks out of competitive periods—in January this year, we had over 34 new players enter our program. Not only that, we had to get them ready for the competitive environment of spring ball just six weeks later: meaning 40% of our new team had to be ready to strap on a helmet and compete in a practice within a month and a half of first arriving on campus. This situation is not unique to FAU, nor is it a one-off occurrence. This summer, around 25 new players will enroll and join us, with roughly eight weeks to prepare them for a five-month season.

Figure 1. Fancy annual plans are not feasible in the transfer era. Planning out years or even months doesn’t make sense when new people are inserted every few months. The amount of continuity, whether staff or player, is extremely low year to year (via Annual Plans).

The pressure to prepare is a lot higher than performance development. Development takes time, which with the new transfer rules, strength and conditioning coaches don’t have. Development has been replaced by recruitment. Your offensive lineman is too skinny or weak? Just replace him in the portal. It’s a two-way street, though—as kids get told they need a year of development, instead of attacking the process that accompanies it, they run up to the compliance office and are in the portal that day.

The pressure to prepare is a lot higher than performance development. Development takes time, which with the new transfer rules, strength and conditioning coaches don’t have, says @CoachJoeyG. Click To Tweet

The demand to prepare has taken the forefront in terms of training emphasis. Every practice style has its own set of stress that is imposed on athletes, and the dissection of these practices through GPS is absolutely necessary to make sure specific thresholds of volume are being met before the players are thrown into the fire of play. There were times of the year where strength and conditioning coaches would focus on building up the reserves necessary to handle the volumes of practice that were planned for later in summer; due to lack of training time that is now something of the past.

Attributes like speed, power, and strength development have taken priority over work capacity at specific points, with the training year broken into blocks of specific training that feed into the succession of more specific training elements as players near the competitive period. What once took the entire year is now smashed down into 60 days—it is a race to see what strength and conditioning coaches can fit in and places a high demand on decisions about what is truly necessary to practice at a high level.

That’s not to say those past training elements have been abandoned, but now with limited time, the work capacity which was built over several consecutive training blocks is higher on the training hierarchy than in previous years when kids were with you for several years. What good is a 40-inch vert if the player can only do it once? It is the responsibility of the strength and conditioning coach to prepare athletes to adapt and thrive in practice. This safeguards players from injury as best as we can, but takes away from the performance development that occurs with longer periods of training. That development time is not there anymore, with coaches expecting players to be ready for a season after eight weeks. The transfer portal has completely changed the planning process, which has affected the rate of progressions in the offseason.

Modifications to the Training Year and Simplifications

The biggest hit in the training planning process with short periods of preparation is the ability to train at high intensities for longer periods of time. When a player is in a program for years, a specific work capacity is built that provides the foundation for intense training. When I speak of “intense training,” I am referring to high neural activities such as sprinting, jumping, Olympic weightlifting, and heavy strength exercises.

Figure 2. Charlie Francis did a great job simplifying the classification process of training by looking at the total motor units involved in the exercise. The intense exercises have to be used with moderation due to the specific work capacity built over years of training in a similar training program.

The ability to program in more complex and intense training methods is not available in most situations because of the lack of time and the abundance of new athletes that need to be integrated to your style of training. Simplistic programs, where new guys can focus on movement quality versus load, are more appropriate and safer for the majority of these players. We do far less maximal speed work than in years past because the players cannot handle high levels of intense activities. Other specific areas that have been altered are our load progression:

• We used to undulate between 75-90% of maximal on given weeks, to where now we operate in a more linear fashion hovering between 65-80% of maximal.
• Many of the more advanced methods, like the use of AEL (accentuated eccentric loading), have been replaced with simpler methods, such as the traditional front squat and back squat, due to the fact most of these new players’ squat patterns need refinement and loading a dysfunctional pattern could lead to injury.

The level of tissue stress and neural stress that is associated with advanced training methods like AEL would wear down new athletes and hinder the following training session—compounding high stress on top of high stress would limit adaptation and lead to overtraining. The lack of time and specific work capacity to navigate safe progression to get to a more advanced training method or complex training again reinforces the point that development is going to take a backseat to preparation in this new world of training in the portal era. You can’t go skip immediately from learning letters to writing essays, and this metaphor is applicable to the progression of exercises and intensities prescriptions. On the other side of rushed and skipped progressions is injury and maladaptation, both of which do not benefit the players.

The lack of time and specific work capacity to navigate safe progression to get to a more advanced training method reinforces the point that development is going to take a backseat to preparation in the portal era, says @CoachJoeyG. Click To Tweet

Using Your Network to Improve Odds of Success: Recruiting to Training

The modern age of college football sees an estimated turnover rate of close to 40% of a total roster each year—with the departure of these players, coaches have to fill those slots with freshmen and, for the most part, transfers from other universities. In the recruiting process, other strength coaches can be a major help with character evaluations—coaches do not have an abundance of time due to the short transfer windows and the onslaught of NIL offers presented to attractive players in the portal. In many cases, the recruitment and closing of a player’s commitment can happen within days.

Gathering as much valuable information as possible in a short amount of time will help the coaches decide whether to pursue a player or, as the coaches define it, “take them off your board.” It is very similar to what NFL scouts do in their evaluation process, except at the professional level they have much more time to formulate evaluations than what is provided in transfer windows of the NCAA. NFL scouts will sit with the head strength and conditioning coach and turn over every stone in learning who these prospective players are—similar to what strength and conditioning coaches now try to uncover when calling peers for insight on recruits in college. My foundation of questioning for college coaches is based on what NFL scouts ask me about prospective prospects.

Image 1. Having friends in the profession is a necessity, as strength and conditioning coaches have honest and valuable information about personnel. With how much players move around, it is just a matter of time before you get a call about a player or have to make that same call.

Additionally, that peer network will be useful when a player enters your program, as you can obtain valuable information that might otherwise be closed off to you. Who else knows these players’ strengths and weaknesses better than the strength and conditioning coach—not only physically, but character-wise as well? The position coaches and head coaches have specific time periods where they have to be hand-off with players, whereas the strength and conditioning coaches do not.

Being a strength and conditioning coach for a Division I football team is a 24/7, 365-day job that is riddled with minimal vacation time and high stress. The head strength and conditioning coach serves as the microphone for the head coach in the off-season, and in some programs is the head coach in that time period while the coach is out on the road recruiting. Wouldn’t it make sense to ask the opinion of a player from the people who probably know these kids best?

I want honest and useful information on players that I may or may not have to spend the next six months with, depending on the contents of these important conversations with peers in my network. The majority of these questions center around the character side for these athletes, peppered in with some performance questions.

1. Does he like football? (A very obvious one, but if you read the first article in this series, it’s not always a yes.)
2. Is he a good player?
3. Does he like training?
4. What does he value?

The answer to these questions will usually produce enough information to warrant a decision on the recruiting process of the prospective player. Again, this process may only take days, so the accuracy of information is critical. Once a player is committed, he is yours for at least that time period before the portal window opens again.

Getting Help on Creating a Performance Road Map on Portal Transfers

Once the courtship of the athlete is finished, a deeper dive into the physical attributes of this athlete will occur. Depending on the time of year and when they entered the portal, a prospective player may be out of training a week or a few months. At most universities, once an athlete enters the portal, they shut down resources for that student athlete and remove them from the team environment. This sounds cold-hearted, but you can put the situation in perspective—it would be like having an employee who left for a promotion elsewhere but still comes back to use the office copy machine until their new job starts.

Knowing how long these athletes have been out of a structured training environment is important, because as much as we think college athletes are going to stay in shape and train, it’s very naive to believe this will be the case. Getting on the phone with the athlete’s previous strength coach to fish around about current physical status is necessary to provide the right introductory program for the prospective athlete.

There are three specific questions that I will ask another coach when a player has committed to our program:

1. Do they have mobility/injury restrictions?
2. Is there an estimated strength assessment?
3. Do they have any speed or power measurements?

With this information we are trying to piece together a plan to prepare these athletes for the season or spring ball. Having a head start on the evaluation process will streamline the initial onboarding.

1. Mobility/Injury Restrictions

This is a tricky set of questions, because HIPAA laws protect any person from having their medical information being used without that person’s consent. Sometimes, in the recruiting process, athletes neglect to fully disclose all of their injury history by mistake, or in some cases, to protect their scholarship at a prospective university.

Image 2. Navigating HIPAA laws while also diving into the injury or mobility issues of a new athlete is not an easy task. In the game of football, an uninjured athlete is one that has never played—meaning, all players at this level have some type of pain. To maintain the golden rule of “do no harm,” strength and conditioning coaches need as much relevant information on injury or mobility restrictions as possible.

Regardless of the reason, the information is critical in programming safe and effective exercises for that athlete. I’ve had an athlete come in with only one year left in college who’d had past shoulder injuries: he walked into the weight room on a day when we’d programmed snatches, but on his sheet he already had an alternative exercise in place.

This bought us trust equity and the athlete felt even more comfortable with our staff, knowing we did our homework on him. It also saved us time on the front end, being able to give this athlete an exercise that promoted the adaptation intended.

2. Estimated Strength Assessment

Due to the microwaved nature of the training process, strength and conditioning coaches do not have years to build our players, we have weeks. I do not have the luxury of training for eight weeks and then assessing strength numbers for our main priority lifts. Teams are counting on these players to come in and make an immediate impact on the field—in some cases, six weeks out from when the strength and conditioning coach gets them into the room.

Image 3. Players rooting on a lift in the FAU weight room.

We have to expedite the process and we can do that with information from the previous strength and conditioning coach—we are not going to ask the athlete what their maxes are, because through experience, those numbers tend to be exaggerated. 

Disclaimer: we take every testing number with a grain of salt, as we do not know the environment nor the exact testing protocol that produced said numbers. It’s not that our way is better or we know more—most maxes are performed in a non-replicable event and training off this number daily is unrealistic due to the arousal level of the athlete in that session (you can read more about our approach to maxes in Why We Dropped ‘Max Out’ Days!).

What we do is use 85-90% of the numbers given, because of those environmental factors alongside the reality that the athlete may be detrained due to inactivity. Imagine prescribing 80% for several reps off of a number that the athlete may not have touched in over a year? These recommendations on strength numbers act like a loose guideline to get us close to the appropriate training loads. VBT devices like Enode narrow down the intensity based on speed of the bar, so we are able to be more exact in the prescription of load for these new athletes. Either way, having these numbers gives us a head start as we aren’t playing the guessing game going into the first few training sessions.

3. Speed and Power Measurements

Just like the strength measurements, getting any prior speed and power measurements helps aid in the development of individual players’ programs. Here at FAU, we do not write 110 individual programs, but we do mailbox athletes into groups based on their strengths, weaknesses, and position. Numbers like vertical, broad jump, tens, or twenties give us insight into where to place the athlete.

Image 4. Athletes perform hurdle jumps in performance training.

That mailboxing process is beyond the scope of this article, but allows us the most strategic formula to get these transfer players ready for the rigors of practice. This information on general athleticism gives us the directions—we now know where we are starting, with the numbers providing comparable data on previous bests versus current training trends.

Evaluation Process at FAU for Initial Testing

We don’t want to only rely on the numbers provided to us from the athletes previous coach—we make sure that we do a thorough pat down of the athlete as well. We follow the same sequence of information gathering, as we first work with our ATC to identify any injury history concerns through the physical process.

After the physical, I will sit the athlete down and talk about any training accommodations they have needed in the past. The information acquired from the initial screening process with the previous coach will provide valuable guidance into where to aim the questioning. From this point, we will do our movement assessment, which you can learn about in greater detail here: “Leveraging Automated Testing in Football Teams: A Strategy for Performance Enhancement.”

Three main evaluation tools we use that address mobility, strength, and speed measurements are:

1. Fusionetics mobility assessment.
2. VALD force plate CMJ test for force potential and asymmetries.
3. Speed Signature software which operates similar to a 1080 Sprint.

Dynamic movement screening, alongside the static movement assessment, gives strength and conditioning coaches the full picture of the kinematic and kinetic outputs of that athlete. Major outliers are investigated and discussed with the strength and conditioning staff and the ATC to explore interventions. Force plate data is used in a similar fashion to the Speed Signature data, but also gives insight to force production capabilities and how these forces are managed in all phases of the stretch-shortening cycle.

Figure 3. Speed Signature can show differences in the left and right leg, along with kinetics, kinematics, and dynamic stability profiles, which can guide the assessment process.

Using the data to explore deficiencies in eccentric, isometric, or concentric force production helps mailbox athletes into specific programs designed to address deficiencies. With short training phases, this process allows us to magnify strengths of the athlete while addressing deficiencies. We can be more accurate with the prescription of training, eliminating wasted time and the “feeling out” process that is accompanied without the use of these additional assessments.

Moving Forward with a Calendar that Resembles the NFL

In the NFL, once the season concludes, players have zero obligations to be at the facility and have months off before having any mandatory activity. At that pro level, free agency also allows players to seek the best circumstances financially or situationally that maximize their earning potential. We see both of these now in the college realm.

Figure 5. College is slowly morphing into an NFL off-season model, which has three phases. Phase one is spent with only the strength coaches and lasts two to three weeks. Phase two consists of indy and walkthroughs and puts the position coaches on the field with players for a total of three weeks. Phase three introduces non-contact drills like seven on seven and 11 on 11, which last 10 total days. (NFL announces offseason workout dates for all 32 teams for 2024 offseason.)

Players can enter their names in the portal in January and sit around until report day in May at their new school, and also move from one school to another based on potential earnings. Speaking with coaches like Buddy Morris and Loren Landow has revealed how close the college strength and conditioning world has become compared to what NFL strength and conditioning coaches have dealt with since modifications the NFLPA made to the training calendar several years ago. Having time to develop is a luxury that is not now afforded to many strength and conditioning coaches in college or the NFL. Worrying about improvements in vertical jump takes a backseat to having players ready for the rigors of practice, as the injury rate will reflect back on the S & C coach whether it’s their fault or not.

Having time to develop is a luxury that is not now afforded to many strength and conditioning coaches in college or the NFL, says @CoachJoeyG Click To Tweet

No one has a perfect plan for dealing with the circumstances brought on by the NCAA rule changes. College strength and conditioning coaches can ask for advice from NFL performance coaches who have had to deal with the lack of prep time for years and how to deal with free agency. Even with this information, the college game is unique and requires a large network of coaches willing to communicate to help streamline the process of information from one school to another. 

Lead image by John Rivera/Icon Sportswire.

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