So far, the NCAA’s Name, Image, Likeness policy and the transfer portal aren’t doing Kent State University football any favors.
In 2022, the Golden Flashes posted a record of 5-7 overall and 4-4 in the Mid-American Conference in then-coach Sean Lewis’ fifth and final season at Kent State. Three of those seven losses came at Pac-12 power Washington, at No. 7 Oklahoma and at No. 1 Georgia, which was on its way to its second straight national championship. So the Flashes were actually 5-4 in games where they stood a fighting chance of winning.
It was a team that, like its Lewis predecessors at KSU, did the job with offense:
– QB Collin Schlee completed 157 of 266 passes for 2,109 yards, with 13 touchdown passes and five interceptions.
– Schlee’s favorite receivers in 2022 were Devontez Walker and Dante Cephas. Walker caught 58 passes for 921 yards and 11 touchdowns, while Cephas caught 48 passes for 744 yards and three touchdowns. In 2021, Cephas had 82 receptions for 1,240 yards and nine touchdowns in helping the Flashes win the MAC East Division title and earn a berth in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.
– KSU’s leading rusher in 2022 was Marquez Cooper, who carried the ball 285 times for 1,331 yards and 13 touchdowns. In the 2021 MAC East title season, Cooper rushed for 1,205 yards and 11 TDs on 241 carries.
Walker, Cephas and Cooper earned First Team All-Mid-American Conference honors in 2022. Schlee was Third Team All-MAC.
The four of them combined for 5,105 yards and 40 touchdowns, and all of them were coming back in 2023.
Except none of the four came back to Kent State. All of them transferred after the 2022 season: Schlee to UCLA, Walker to North Carolina, Cephas to Penn State and Cooper to Ball State.
And they weren’t the only key players from the Flashes’ 2022 squad to leave.
That was the unenviable situation facing first-year KSU football coach Kenni Burns in 2023, and the team’s 1-11 finish overall and 0-8 showing in the MAC really shouldn’t have surprised anyone. It would be tough for Ohio State, a program with seemingly limitless resources, to replace 5,000 yards and 40 touchdowns of offense in a single year, let alone Kent State, where resources are at a premium.
And how did 2023 go for Schlee and company in their new homes? Like this:
– Schlee went from Third Team All-MAC at Kent State to a backup who played sparingly at UCLA, going 14 of 31 passing for 139 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions in the regular season. In his most extended action of the campaign Nov. 11 against Arizona State, Schlee went 11 of 18 for 117 yards and a touchdown with no interceptions in the Bruins’ 17-7 loss to the Sun Devils.
– Walker had a big year catching passes from NFL-bound QB Drake Maye at North Carolina, finishing the regular season with 41 receptions for 699 yards and seven touchdowns. He had a huge game Oct. 21 at Virginia, catching 11 passes for 146 yards and a touchdown in the Tar Heels’ 31-27 loss to the Cavaliers. Walker was voted Third Team All-Atlantic Coast Conference at wide receiver.
– Cephas didn’t have the same impact at Penn State, which was breaking in first-year starter Drew Allar at quarterback. Playing in a Nittany Lions passing attack that rarely stretched the field vertically, Cephas had 22 catches for 246 yards and two touchdowns. His best outing came in a 51-15 rout of Maryland on Nov. 4 in College Park, Maryland, when he caught six passes for 53 yards and two touchdowns. (In case you’re wondering, Cephas had two catches for 28 yards in the Nittany Lions’ 20-12 loss at Ohio State on Oct. 21).
– Which brings us to Cooper: The two-time 1,000-yard rusher at Kent State did it again for MAC rival Ball State, finishing with 1,043 yards and four touchdowns on 227 carries. And he had a big game against his former teammates, rushing for 140 yards and a touchdown on 25 carries in the Cardinals’ 34-3 victory over the Golden Flashes on Nov. 18 in Muncie, Indiana. Cooper was named Second Team All-Mid-American Conference at running back.
And how did their replacements do at Kent State this season? Not bad, all things considered, especially the wideout duo of Chrishon McCray and Luke Floriea, who were recently named First Team and Third Team All-MAC, respectively. McCray had 41 catches for 610 yards and four touchdowns, while Floriea finished with 39 receptions for 413 yards and also had four TDs.
Quarterbacks Michael Alaimo — who transferred to Kent State after three seasons at Purdue — and Tommy Ulatowski combined to go 139 of 265 for 1,669 yards and nine touchdowns, while the team’s top two rushers, Gavin Garcia and Jaylen Thomas, combined for 1,004 yards and four touchdowns on 271 attempts.
Certainly a noble effort by the replacements, who were thrown to the proverbial wolves in 2023, but losing over 5,000 yards and 40 touchdowns is going to hurt — and it did.
And it’s not going to change. The transfer portal is here to stay. NIL is here to stay — the only question being how it will evolve as players, coaches and administrators adjust to this new “Wild West” of college sports, to borrow Blue & Gold Collective co-founder Mike Beder’s phrase.
The early returns aren’t promising for mid-majors. Kent State was decimated by transfers after the 2022 season, and we saw the consequences of that in 2023. And it won’t be the last time the Flashes feel some NIL and transfer portal pain.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Like the bluebloods above them, mid-majors can – and some already are — slowly but surely learning how to work this new system to their advantage.
They can pluck disgruntled players from the rosters of larger schools, with the promise of increased playing time and production at their school.
They can point to circumstances like Collin Schlee’s at UCLA, where it’s unwise to trade significant production at a mid-major for quality bench time at a Power 5 — particularly in a conference like the MAC that has produced quarterbacks such as Byron Leftwich, Ben Roethlisberger and Kent State’s own Julian Edelman, who parlayed his time as a successful MAC quarterback into a Super Bowl MVP at wide receiver.
They can tell high school recruits that they’ll garner more NFL attention shining in a MAC program than they will getting lost in the shuffle with the big boys.
They can do all that and more as they learn to navigate a chaotic system that has made loyalty and perseverance virtually obsolete.
And maybe, just maybe, the Kent States of the world can level what has become a precipitously tilted playing field.
Tom Hardesty is a Portager sports columnist. He was formerly assistant sports editor at the Record-Courier and author of the book Glimpses of Heaven.