THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Schools shop for those bargain bigs in the transfer portal

The transfer market gets wilder every year.

I suspect that by 2030, college football and basketball coaches will be attending massive auctions in Hong Kong or Singapore (or both), carrying wads of cash for offers to all those handsome athletes on show.

Doubt me?

Did you notice that Michigan monster-stomped all victims on the way to that NCAA hoops crown?

The Wolverines made good use of NIL and the transfer portal to fill some holes on the roster.

Umm, how many starters from elsewhere do you suppose the “Maize and Blue” ran out there en route to the title?

The answer would be …

Five.

Indeed, that juggernaut of a team belonged on other courts in the 2024-25 season.

The point here isn’t that Michigan won a championship with a truckload of all new players.

No, we’re talking about it now because Michigan went five-for-five on transfer starters and NOBODY paid any attention to it.

THIS IS now the way of the game.

As best I can remember the beginning of these massive transfers, the first school to load up with bags of off-campus money and turn it into wins was Iowa State.

Now, of course, it would be madness trying to win a national championship WITHOUT paying for your new gang of stars.

Players change schools as though they’re visiting friends and sleeping on couches.

Almost without exception, they do it for money or playing time.

Gonzaga is right in the middle of transfer portal time (started April 7, ends April 21), and already has lost five players.

The Zags are stuck on something of the carnival ride at the moment — beside NIL and its hangover, there’s the summer move coming to the Pac-12 conference.

I’m not sure how much players in this era cared about April 7, or campus geography, distance from home and so forth.

Plenty of them change high schools to play the highest-level competition and perform almost exclusively for college scouts and colleges.

They wind up at hoops-only institutions like Prolific Prep, etc.

Meanwhile, I joked earlier in this column about a players’ meat market in Asia because we ARE getting closer to that sort of format.

The fifth player to depart Gonzaga via the portal this week was former backup center Ismaila Diagne.

FYI, the others were Emmanuel Innocenti, Steele Venters, Braeden Smith and little-used guard Cade Orness.

Diagne previously played in Madrid, where he was a roommate to fellow Senegalese Massamba Diop, a talented 7-footer who played last season at Arizona State — and is now in the portal.

Diop has a “do not contact” tag with his transfer request, and the only two schools mentioned in his conversations with 247Sports were Gonzaga and St. John’s.

Diop shares an agent with several high-profile former Zags, so Mark Few and Co. certainly have a shot at him.

Innocenti, the defensive demon, was generally a starter late this season; Smith came in from Colgate, hoping to be the starting guard; Venters is a 3-point shooter who sadly lost some athleticism after two serious surgeries; Diagne was a classic big man who was only missing mobility; and Orness was a bench player who saw little action.

FEW HAS a well-earned history of reloading his roster, even when things look as though they’ll be a little thin.

The Zags’ incoming prep class is ranked 23rd nationally by 247, and if you match that group with returnees Braden Huff, Davis Fogle and Mario Saint-Supery, well …

They’d still need more help.

Maybe a LOT more help.

The class that the Zags will greet this summer — as members of the Pac-12 — includes a trio of 4-star prospects: Luca Foster, Sam Funches, and Jack Kayil.

After that, Gonzaga will turn to the chaos of the transfer portal.

Diop is the big fish (in all ways), but the Zags have been recruiting players for some time with an eye toward who was likely to leave.

Is that mid-season recruiting permitted?

Hell, no.

Needless to say, though, everyone does it.

Assistant coaches see players all year that they tried desperately to sign when the prospects were coming out the first time.

There are some unspoken rules during the battle to land players from the mob of roughly 1,800 who will be in this year’s portal. 

That’s how you wind up with a crazy situation like the Zags losing a center from Senegal …

While fighting like mad to sign another center from Senegal.

Someday, you’ll shop for shooting guards at a Saturday market.

Next to the cantaloupes.

Email: [email protected]

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press three times each week, normally Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday unless, you know, stuff happens.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”