SAN ANTONIO — Spring football practice is underway for UTSA.
The Roadrunners are coming off their second straight Conference USA Championship as they now prepared to move into the American Athletic Conference. We had the opportunity to spend some time with Head Coach Jeff Traylor before practice and covered several topics.
One of the topics discussed at length was his criticism of the current landscape of college football: pay for play. The NIL money has certainly changed the amateur game, and the NCAA transfer portal seemingly has no player committing to any given university from start to finish anymore.
"I think something has to be done so that we are not a feeder program for other programs," he said. "If they get in contact with my kids and take my kids off my roster I don't like that. I do not want to be a minor league team for other teams."
We've seen massive movement via the transfer portal already the last couple of years. UTSA has benefitted from that, and they've had some players leave, too. Coach Traylor, though, has not been pleased if his players are contacted by other programs.
"They should not be doing that, that is tampering," he said. "That is against the rules, and that is what I have been trying to get across to everybody. That should not be going on. That's the part I was upset about because I know my players have been contacted."
Coach Traylor told us during the December National Signing Day Period that athletes are now essentially signing one year deals with the opportunity to enter the portal whenever they want.
"We have not lost anyone yet," he said. Now is there is still another portal transfer opportunity May 1-May 15. "I know we have lots of players on this team that could make more money with more collectives at other universities that have chosen to stay because they love the city and they like what our collectives are doing for them."
It was also important to Coach to get the word out there if UTSA is to take the next step to national prominence that everybody has to get involved to help move the program forward, and he made that point in this way.
"I've been more than stern about that," he said. "I've alienated every Longhorn, Aggie, Baylor Bear and Red Raider out there in the aspect that we have to quit thinking that way. We have to quit seeing ourselves that way. We have to stop saying that it is great to play those guys close. We have to get this program where we beat those people. We are going to have to push it as a university and city. We have to put all our chips out there. This is going to come back to us one day. We have to go now. We have a real chance right now. We have a unique chance. We are going to have a really good team, an it will be interesting to see where we fall."