The 2023 Orange Bowl took place in Hard Rock Stadium. Courtesy photo

SHEPHERDSTOWN — The transfer portal now in place in college athletics has caused problems that have badly shaken that amateur sports world.

It is misunderstood, often misused and left the college football bowl season full of misery and finger pointing.

The lengthy bowl season was badly stained — none worse than the Orange Bowl, where unbeaten Florida State and defending nation champion Georgia met.

Georgia, with its nearly full compliment of players, staggered Florida State, 63-3, in a classic mismatch where the Seminoles were missing more than a dozen players who had been around for most of the 13-0 regular season and ACC championship game against Louisville.

When Florida State was not selected to play in the Final Four (Michigan, Washington, Alabama and Texas), a significant number of its players opted not to play in the Orange Bowl. A few had injuries, others did not want to risk injury because they were deemed or deemed themselves to be viable candidates for the National Football League draft. Some of the defectors went into the transfer portal to get away from a place where they weren’t playing enough for their own gratification, where they weren’t going to get more on-field time in 2024 or where they disliked their situation.

It wasn’t just the blemished Orange Bowl that suffered from players scurrying into the transfer portal.

Some bowl teams survived the exodus. West Virginia was one of them. Maryland was another.

Even some starters or those with significant playing time shuffled off to another landing spot.

They completed the regular season, but then left. Some schools would have a dozen or more enter the transfer portal and only be unhappy that four would be leaving.

Some places had those athletes who had not gained playing time or were not going to be valued, even in 2024, leave. Coaches were not dismayed by those departures. In fact, they would regain those scholarships, recruit more players and possibly find athletes who could actually help them.

Coaches were once castigated for “running off” players. With the advent of the transfer portal, that will become common practice at some schools.

Today’s coaches rarely promise playing time. They choose their words carefully. They recruit with glowing words for those they want at their school, but they don’t make outright promises.

But it doesn’t take long to figure out any athlete’s current value or future worth. And many in the transfer portal simply want a new start with a new set of those evaluating their abilities.

At times, some transfers are ruled ineligible by the NCAA. At WVU, current basketball players RaeQuan Battle and Noah Farrakhan were ruled ineligible to play at all in the 2023-2024 season. However, a court ruling invalidated that NCAA edict and gave the players a two-week window to play. Then the NCAA ruled they could play the remainder of the 2023-2024 season without penalty. And now, Battle and Farrakhan are WVU’s two leading scorers.

The transfer portal still confuses and exasperates. It’s not a situation that is etched in stone. It will change again (and again), It will be challenged again (somewhere) in the courts.

But for now, every coach, athletic administrator and athlete will attempt to make heads or tails of it.