Penn State's Beau Pribula entering the transfer portal is not the NCAA's fault

Before we all jump on the latest bandwagon and reach the end of college football as we know it, let’s get smart together and embrace the one core concept we learned as children.

You can’t have your cake and eat it at the same time.

Or in this case, the ever-increasing empowerment of players in college athletics: You can’t have everything – and still want more.

Beau Pribula is a backup quarterback at Penn State and has taken over social media Sunday to announce that the NCAA’s postseason transfer model has forced him to choose between playing in the College Football Playoff with Penn State or entering the transfer portal.

He then wrote that he entered the transfer portal “with a heavy heart.”

You must be joking.

Here I have the great task of defending the NCAA, a dysfunctional, idle collection of presidential blowjobs who proclaim that they essentially have the best interests of everyone involved.

I don’t know what makes me sick more: telling the truth about this transfer portal nonsense or defending the bastards at the NCAA.

First and fundamental: Any player who enters the transfer portal does not have to leave his school until he signs with another player. So Pribula, a switch quarterback who typically plays a handful of snaps per game, doesn’t have to leave the team.

He can enter the portal, stay on the Penn State team through the College Football Playoff and then negotiate with other schools. This has nothing to do with the limited number of scholarships available and the horror stories (most of them true) of players entering the portal and ultimately not finding a home.

Pribula is in the portal and every school knows that he is transferring. If there is a market for him in the portal, schools will wait until after Penn State’s CFP run to make a decision on a quarterback – the most important position on the field.

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Not that it needs to be said, but what the heck: Another portal will open in the spring, and the NCAA – having anticipated this potential CFP/portal issue – has given one to players participating in the new 12-team CFP Expansion of the winter transfer portal granted beyond the December 28th deadline.

In other words, there is no reason for Pribula (or any other college football player) to be faced with an “impossible decision,” as Pribula wrote on social media.

Pribula is a communications student and graduated from one of the best public universities in the country in three years. This is not the “system” taking advantage of the player.

This is the player who uses the system to his advantage.

It should come as no surprise that less than 24 hours after Pribula’s announcement, Penn State quarterback Drew Allar announced he would be returning to State College in 2025.

It’s not that difficult to chart Pribula’s journey from a lifelong Penn State fan, a boy who dreamed of playing for the Nittany Lions, to a player who did everything that was asked of him but failed to land the starting job can win, to the disappointment of being left behind Allar for another year.

Pribula doesn’t have a playing record to speak of and any school investing in him (scholarship, turnover deal, NIL deal) would do so based on potential. Not many Power Four Conference schools spend a lot of money on the potential of a portal.

In other words, the longer Pribula waits to leave Penn State, the less likely he is to make contact with a major conference school.

This Penn State graduate, whose family is Penn State graduates, who played at Central York High School – about two hours southeast of State College – cannot be part of such a selfish decision to advance his team to leave at the end of the season.

So it’s about the NCAA, the easy villain.

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Players can now earn money and move freely using their name, image and likeness without first having to sit out a season of eligibility.

Starting next season, players in all college sports will be paid from a media rights revenue-sharing salary pool of at least $20.5 million. If the House-NCAA settlement isn’t approved in July, it could be much more.

Everything the players asked for — including $2.8 billion in back payments to former players from 2017 — was essentially handed over hat in hand by the NCAA.

Now Pribula wants the NCAA to clear him of guilt. Because a player who did everything right at Penn State, who was the perfect teammate in every way, can’t just walk away in the middle of a championship run. Someone has to take the blame.

Why not the NCAA?

Why not hop on social media and get support from the loud pitchfork and denounce how the mean men and women at the NCAA force the poor, misunderstood player to make a difficult life decision?

Kind of like making the difficult life decision to go to Penn State in the first place.

Look, the players have been on the losing side of this deal for three ages and only since 2021 have they legitimately started to find their financial footing. But you can’t play both sides of the story.

You can’t be the one being taken advantage of when you get everything you want.

You can’t complain about the NCAA oppressing you when you control movement and employment. Because that’s exactly what it is now – no matter how university presidents and conference commissioners try all sorts of mental exercises to convince everyone that it isn’t so.

You have a job. You have responsibility.

If you leave and get another job, it’s up to you. Nobody else.

Almost three years ago, Jayden Daniels left Arizona State and entered the transfer portal. He spent three uneven seasons with the Sun Devils and decided it was time to go.

Five weeks later, in late March 2022 and during the spring portal — after his Arizona State teammates took to social media to share their thoughts on his departure — Daniels signed with LSU with two years of eligibility remaining. He then led the Tigers to back-to-back ten-win seasons and won the Heisman Trophy in 2023.

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Penn State’s Beau Pribula entering the transfer portal is not the NCAA’s fault

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