USC football hired Lincoln Riley to be the head coach of the Trojans before the 2022 season, and he has done a great job since taking over. USC immediately became a contender under Riley and was one win away from making the College Football Playoff last year, but a loss against Utah football in the Pac-12 championship game derailed those hopes. Still, it was a great season, and the Trojans are right back at the top of college football again this year. A big reason for the success so far is because of quarterback Caleb Williams, who came to USC via the transfer portal. Riley has been given some good gifts from the portal, but he also sees the negative aspects of it.

“Right now, there's no data, so everybody's just going off in all these different directions on what they think is right,” Lincoln Riley said on In Depth with Graham Bensinger. “When we start to see what is the real success rate of these transfers – are these transfers graduating? I feel like that'll level off.”

When things aren't going right for a student-athlete these days, it's easy for them to put their name in the portal and try their luck at different school. Riley thinks that down the road, this might become less common.

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“I think right now, it's just the cool, easy idea to do,” Riley continued. “But you also see the thousands of guys in the portal right now that don't have a home, that left a home and a scholarship that they had. You see a lot of guys that are going places and not graduating.”

Riley brings up a valid point. Right now, only the good stories of the portal get told, but the players left behind are stuck in a very difficult situation. The current landscape of college sports is changing dramatically, and it'll be interesting to see how it continues to evolve.