Anonymous women’s basketball coaches say transfer portal is “more bad” for sport, dish on NIL

Over the last month, The Athletic spoke with more than 35 women’s college basketball head coaches to dish on an array of topics from the changing tides in the sport to the best coaches in the game to the greatest college basketball player of all time. These coaches, who hail from power conferences and high mid-majors, were granted anonymity to allow them to speak openly without fear of retribution from their own programs or the NCAA. Throughout the week, we’re sharing coaches’ opinions on the most pressing issues in their sport.

It’s an unprecedented time in college sports. Between the transfer portal, Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) and the current push in some corners of the country to make college athletes into university employees, coaches are facing new issues. The sport is changing by the day, and it seems as if every other week a new lawsuit pops up that, in some way, threatens the existence of the NCAA.

Two of the questions in this year’s poll focus exactly on those topics.

The first is about the transfer portal, which opened up this week, and has become one of the biggest pendulum swingers in college hoops. In 2021, the NCAA Division I Board of…