Flagrant tampering at play in high-profile TCU transfers for football & basketball
In the span of five months TCU lost its starting quarterback and one of its top men’s basketball players in the transfer portal to the BIGSEC10.
In December, quarterback Josh Hoover, who did graduate from TCU, left for plenty of money to succeed Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza for the national champion Indiana Hoosiers.
In April, starting forward David Punch left TCU for Texas.
The overwhelming thought to their respective departures is that one or both were contacted by other schools well before they made their respective announcements that they were in the transfer portal.
There illustrates the two-fold challenge that has developed in the past year in major college athletics: The flagrant disregard for the rules in the transfer portal, and the miscalculation about the need for more money to be successful in it.
What exactly is ‘tampering?’
When Punch announced he was in the transfer portal, he added the “do not contact” tag. This means either he, or his representation, will reach out to initiate conversation to an interested party.
Cough-cough ... what it really means is that Punch likely already was in contact with another program, and this was an informal part to his negotiation.
“By the letter of the law is it tampering? I don’t know. People who want to offer, they’re going to do it,” TCU director of athletics Mike Buddie said in a phone interview. “We know it’s happening. The ‘do not contact’ tab means they have been contacted and technically that is tampering but it’s not something we think is worth pursuing because it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the player who did it.
“It could be a friend of the player who sends a text message to an assistant coach. It could be a relative. It could be a high school coach. It could be anybody.”
The NCAA bylaw on tampering says it is “unauthorized communication — direct or indirect — with an athlete, their family, or their representatives while they are enrolled at another school.”
It’s happening all over the country, and the enforcement of this law borders between Impossible and Really Impossible.
In the past two months, the NCAA proposed legislation that would punish violators, including “Barring the head coach from all football and administrative duties for six contests; Fine the institution 20% of (the team’s) budget; and reduce the permitted roster spots for the following season.”
In April, the NCAA announced penalties on the Iowa football program for tampering when it recruited quarterback Cade McNamara when he was still at Michigan, back in 2022. The penalties include vacated wins during the 2023 season, a one-year probation, a $25,000 fine, a two-week recruiting ban and a reduction in scouting days.
As much as the parameter-less financial model of the modern major college athletic department vexes leaders, the realities of the transfer portal are a close second — because they are linked.
How to win in the transfer portal
Starting in approximately October ‘25, major college athletic department officials, and their bosses, all realized they had sold the lie they wanted desperately to believe.
They had all believed the myth that the House settlement with the NCAA created a “hard cap” of $20.5 million to pay all of it its student athletes; they would no longer need to chase donors and boosters in search for more money. They had what they needed, and calculated the spending against revenues to make the numbers work.
They were wrong.
According to industry leaders, the estimated payroll figure for a competitive college football roster in a power conference is at least $30 million. A top men’s basketball roster is in the area of $12 million.
“I think all of us had to go back with our hats in ours hands to donors,” Buddie said. “Before [in 2025] we were able to say, ‘This is the last time we’re going to have to ask for this type of financial support,’ and we learned that is not the case at all.”
They are going back to these people specifically because of the transfer portal; that is where the money needed above the House settlement figure is.
When observers, or college sports officials, cry, “This is not sustainable!” this is the part they are referring to; it is sustainable, as long as schools can continually convince wealthy people to give them money in return for the chance to wear a T-shirt that says, “Big 12 champions.”
“People focused all of their energy and their time how to ‘circumvent that cap’ to push more money to the student athletes,” Buddie said. “We are chasing dollar after dollar with no sense that a ceiling has been reached in any sport. Once you pay a point guard $1 million the first year, they are not going to get less the next.”
Buddie is hopeful that in the coming months a more definitive structure will be drafted, and agreed to, with enforceable parameters.
Until that happens — if it ever does — he will work in an area where tampering is against the rules, but there is virtually nothing he can do to stop it.
