The 2025 transfer portal: High comedy and karmic justice

Decades of forced restraint go out with a bang

The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, Albert Bierstadt, 1863

After the final possession of the 2025 men's college basketball season, when Houston guard Emmanuel Sharp (literally) dropped the ball, chaos was unleashed. Portal season. Roster time. Wagon trains on the horizon. Gold rush. Prairie fever. Mass hysteria.

The 2025 transfer season had been chugging along in the background, of course, having opened March 24. Still, during the NCAA Tournament, it is -- if one is so inclined, anyway -- easy and preferable to block out the drumbeat of personnel announcements and coaching searches and with that being saids. One should deliberately hyperfocus on the hugely important games still being played. A college basketball season, especially one this good, is much too precious to squander on distractions.

Since the national title game, though, and through Tuesday, when the portal formally closed, a fuller picture has emerged. It has comprised equal parts unrestrained capitalistic fervor and disordered karmic comeuppance. After decades of restricting players' earnings to scholarships and limiting their ability to move freely, college athletics programs have experienced a sort of upside-down zenith, a total reversal of the past. Fastidious restrictions and outdated mores fully disappeared. The Old World receded. The Wild West rose.

Most of all: It has been very, very funny.

How so? Start with the money. There has been a lot of money.