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Damn Good Rat
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- Jun 12, 2005
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Long read copied from t Athletic. Have to think there are a boatload of kids in the same situation. I'd expect the number of transfers to go down in the coming years because of situations like this: (Part 1)
How a former all-conference player got stuck in the transfer portal, what he learned and how he plans to get out
Where is Kris Moll these days? His current location is Miami, if you want to be precise. He moved back home for the spring and is staying busy lifting, training and waiting.
But figuratively? For now, yes, he’s stuck in the transfer portal.
It’s hard to believe a player with Moll’s resume is in this predicament. The UAB grad transfer linebacker was a three-year starter with 51 college games under his belt. He has produced 234 tackles, 27.5 tackles for loss, 13 sacks, six forced fumbles and two interceptions in his career. He made first-team All-Conference USA in back-to-back seasons. Phil Steele even named him an honorable mention All-American in 2020.
Yet four months after putting his name in the portal, Moll is still struggling to convince college coaches to take a one-season shot on him. How does this happen?
The process had seemingly started off quite well. So many coaches were calling and texting when he entered the portal on Dec. 3, including several at Power 5 programs. Moll can say in hindsight that he misplayed his situation, missing out on some potentially great opportunities. He’s living in uncomfortable uncertainty as he awaits his next one.
“I felt like I was one of the best players in the country a year ago, and now I don’t even have a spot to go to,” Moll said. “I’m just like, ‘Wow.’ It’s kind of weird. I understand it. But it’s just crazy.”
There are hundreds more players just like him these days, still available in the NCAA transfer portal and hunting for their next home. They believed the portal would send them somewhere better. Maybe, in time, it still will. But over the course of his own stressful search, Moll had to learn the tough lessons about how portal recruiting actually works.
The first lesson: You need to understand how to play the process.
UAB was Moll’s only FBS offer coming out of Coral Gables High School. He didn’t go through the big-time recruiting experience like many of his Dade County peers. So when the transfer offers started coming in quickly, he figured this was going to be fun.
“A lot of schools hit me up the first day,” he said. “I really wasn’t too sure how to take it, but I felt like a big dog and an All-American. I was like, ‘You know what? I wanna go Power 5. I wanna prove to everybody I’m the best.’ I was trying to just talk to the Power 5 schools.”
Louisville was one of the first to call and extend an offer. Inside linebackers coach Derek Nicholson visited Moll in Birmingham the next week and expressed serious interest, so Moll got an official visit scheduled for Dec. 8. He heard from a lot of coaches at Group of 5 schools during those early weeks and admits he wasn’t great about responding to many of them.
Moll went on the Louisville visit and thought it went great. He felt so good about this potential new home, in fact, that while he was on the Louisville trip, he decided to cancel the official visit he was going to take next, to SMU. He was just that sure he’d commit to Louisville.
When he called a few days later to check in and share that he was considering committing, Moll was told Louisville was going in a different direction. He contacted SMU and learned they’d already filled their spot. UCF told him the same. Arizona had talked about setting up an official visit but went with someone else as well. He tried to hit up Louisiana, Coastal Carolina and the Group of 5 schools he hadn’t taken seriously at first. No luck.
“I had a lot of G5 schools and I didn’t pay attention to any of them,” he said. “I was just so big-headed about trying to go Power 5, which was so dumb of me. I didn’t really know how to work all of this.”
The moral of the story isn’t just about the folly of putting all your eggs in one basket. It’s not that simple. What Moll experienced is the stark difference in the speed and urgency of portal recruiting. As one college coach summed it up to The Athletic: High school recruitments take two years. Transfer recruitments take two weeks.
Sure, the pressure is on the coaches to go win those battles as fast as they can. But most players who bet on themselves and go in the portal must be careful not to squander whichever options arise. Moll was one of 502 FBS scholarship players who entered the portal in December. It can be easy to get lost in that flood. And the offers that get thrown around have expiration dates.
“I got left with no fallback school,” Moll said. “The spring semester came and there were no spots for me at schools where I really wanted to go. I’d just jumped in blindly and it kind of bit me in the butt a little bit. I had all those offers and thought it was all sweet. When that one spot didn’t work out, it got hard because I really didn’t build relationships with other coaches.”
Now he’s having to put in the work of reaching out to them, reconnecting with the ones he’s met or heard from and making the case for why they need him. The 22-year-old linebacker had to refine his approach, learning how to better converse with recruiters. “I really didn’t know the right and wrong answers, what’s a good or bad thing to say,” he said.
Moll has tweeted out a couple times that he’s still uncommitted, hoping more FBS coaches will notice. He can tell, though, that there’s apprehension right now. It’s like the suspicion a house listed on Zillow for too many months evokes: Why didn’t anyone else bite? What’s wrong here?
“A lot of schools hit me up and they always ask me: ‘Whatever happened with Louisville? Why didn’t you go there?’” Moll said. “Or they’ll say, ‘I thought you were committed.’ It’s a lot of worries with these coaches. I just need somebody to give me a shot.”
Another lesson: If you enter the portal, be prepared for scrutiny.
Moll is proud of what he put on tape as a playmaker for the Blazers’ defense. He hoped that film along with his experience and accolades would net a good list of scholarship offers. But clearly, there are reasons why the offers aren’t rolling in.
He’s been a positional tweener during his college career. In 2017, Moll arrived at UAB as an undersized linebacker at 6-foot-1 and about 183 pounds. He got up to 200 pounds by the end of fall camp and played on special teams as a freshman. At the end of the spring in 2018, he was moved to nickelback. He had never played in the secondary but put in the work to catch up, earn a starting role and enjoy a breakout sophomore season for the Conference USA champs.
When he was able to get up to 215 pounds entering 2019, his coaches let him play middle linebacker. Moll put up big numbers: 104 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, nine sacks, four forced fumbles and an interception. “He’s just got such a knack for the ball,” UAB coach Bill Clark told reporters that fall.
How a former all-conference player got stuck in the transfer portal, what he learned and how he plans to get out
Where is Kris Moll these days? His current location is Miami, if you want to be precise. He moved back home for the spring and is staying busy lifting, training and waiting.
But figuratively? For now, yes, he’s stuck in the transfer portal.
It’s hard to believe a player with Moll’s resume is in this predicament. The UAB grad transfer linebacker was a three-year starter with 51 college games under his belt. He has produced 234 tackles, 27.5 tackles for loss, 13 sacks, six forced fumbles and two interceptions in his career. He made first-team All-Conference USA in back-to-back seasons. Phil Steele even named him an honorable mention All-American in 2020.
Yet four months after putting his name in the portal, Moll is still struggling to convince college coaches to take a one-season shot on him. How does this happen?
The process had seemingly started off quite well. So many coaches were calling and texting when he entered the portal on Dec. 3, including several at Power 5 programs. Moll can say in hindsight that he misplayed his situation, missing out on some potentially great opportunities. He’s living in uncomfortable uncertainty as he awaits his next one.
“I felt like I was one of the best players in the country a year ago, and now I don’t even have a spot to go to,” Moll said. “I’m just like, ‘Wow.’ It’s kind of weird. I understand it. But it’s just crazy.”
There are hundreds more players just like him these days, still available in the NCAA transfer portal and hunting for their next home. They believed the portal would send them somewhere better. Maybe, in time, it still will. But over the course of his own stressful search, Moll had to learn the tough lessons about how portal recruiting actually works.
The first lesson: You need to understand how to play the process.
UAB was Moll’s only FBS offer coming out of Coral Gables High School. He didn’t go through the big-time recruiting experience like many of his Dade County peers. So when the transfer offers started coming in quickly, he figured this was going to be fun.
“A lot of schools hit me up the first day,” he said. “I really wasn’t too sure how to take it, but I felt like a big dog and an All-American. I was like, ‘You know what? I wanna go Power 5. I wanna prove to everybody I’m the best.’ I was trying to just talk to the Power 5 schools.”
Louisville was one of the first to call and extend an offer. Inside linebackers coach Derek Nicholson visited Moll in Birmingham the next week and expressed serious interest, so Moll got an official visit scheduled for Dec. 8. He heard from a lot of coaches at Group of 5 schools during those early weeks and admits he wasn’t great about responding to many of them.
Moll went on the Louisville visit and thought it went great. He felt so good about this potential new home, in fact, that while he was on the Louisville trip, he decided to cancel the official visit he was going to take next, to SMU. He was just that sure he’d commit to Louisville.
When he called a few days later to check in and share that he was considering committing, Moll was told Louisville was going in a different direction. He contacted SMU and learned they’d already filled their spot. UCF told him the same. Arizona had talked about setting up an official visit but went with someone else as well. He tried to hit up Louisiana, Coastal Carolina and the Group of 5 schools he hadn’t taken seriously at first. No luck.
“I had a lot of G5 schools and I didn’t pay attention to any of them,” he said. “I was just so big-headed about trying to go Power 5, which was so dumb of me. I didn’t really know how to work all of this.”
The moral of the story isn’t just about the folly of putting all your eggs in one basket. It’s not that simple. What Moll experienced is the stark difference in the speed and urgency of portal recruiting. As one college coach summed it up to The Athletic: High school recruitments take two years. Transfer recruitments take two weeks.
Sure, the pressure is on the coaches to go win those battles as fast as they can. But most players who bet on themselves and go in the portal must be careful not to squander whichever options arise. Moll was one of 502 FBS scholarship players who entered the portal in December. It can be easy to get lost in that flood. And the offers that get thrown around have expiration dates.
“I got left with no fallback school,” Moll said. “The spring semester came and there were no spots for me at schools where I really wanted to go. I’d just jumped in blindly and it kind of bit me in the butt a little bit. I had all those offers and thought it was all sweet. When that one spot didn’t work out, it got hard because I really didn’t build relationships with other coaches.”
Now he’s having to put in the work of reaching out to them, reconnecting with the ones he’s met or heard from and making the case for why they need him. The 22-year-old linebacker had to refine his approach, learning how to better converse with recruiters. “I really didn’t know the right and wrong answers, what’s a good or bad thing to say,” he said.
Moll has tweeted out a couple times that he’s still uncommitted, hoping more FBS coaches will notice. He can tell, though, that there’s apprehension right now. It’s like the suspicion a house listed on Zillow for too many months evokes: Why didn’t anyone else bite? What’s wrong here?
“A lot of schools hit me up and they always ask me: ‘Whatever happened with Louisville? Why didn’t you go there?’” Moll said. “Or they’ll say, ‘I thought you were committed.’ It’s a lot of worries with these coaches. I just need somebody to give me a shot.”
Another lesson: If you enter the portal, be prepared for scrutiny.
Moll is proud of what he put on tape as a playmaker for the Blazers’ defense. He hoped that film along with his experience and accolades would net a good list of scholarship offers. But clearly, there are reasons why the offers aren’t rolling in.
He’s been a positional tweener during his college career. In 2017, Moll arrived at UAB as an undersized linebacker at 6-foot-1 and about 183 pounds. He got up to 200 pounds by the end of fall camp and played on special teams as a freshman. At the end of the spring in 2018, he was moved to nickelback. He had never played in the secondary but put in the work to catch up, earn a starting role and enjoy a breakout sophomore season for the Conference USA champs.
When he was able to get up to 215 pounds entering 2019, his coaches let him play middle linebacker. Moll put up big numbers: 104 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, nine sacks, four forced fumbles and an interception. “He’s just got such a knack for the ball,” UAB coach Bill Clark told reporters that fall.
