Loyalty is a word of very little value in today's NCAA spectacle.
The NCAA Transfer Portal has created a free agency for collegiate sports, and it has become a major difference-maker in football and basketball. Players are coming and going, and you will now rarely see college athletes compete at the same school for their entire experience.
However, in this case, LSU football's starting quarterback, Garrett Nussmeier, is one of those new anomalies. Instead of chasing a payday and leaving for another school, he decided to stay at LSU. Nussmeier will be playing on Sundays very soon, and he only has this one season left before getting there. The senior felt that staying at LSU was the best decision for him.
“I think it’s been a huge advantage for me to be able to stay in the same system and at the same school,” Nussmeier told Yahoo Sports. “To be around the same coaches and similar teammates, and it’s something that I’m very grateful that I made that decision. Very blessed and very thankful. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than LSU.”
He later mentions that people don’t all view LSU the same way. These discussions came up in the locker room.
“Just because I stayed doesn’t mean that it’s going to work out for everybody,” he later said. “It’s very situational, it's very different. So I’m very thankful that I had the opportunity to stay and I was allowed to make that decision. There’s definitely conversations in the locker room about guys and who might leave and trying to talk to your teammates and to pick their mind and see how they’re feeling about things. There are ways that you can help them out or make them feel better about situations. It’s definitely a different dynamic than it was in the past.”