Should college “transfer portal trophy” go to Cal?

They should offer a new award in college football, call it the Transfer Portal Trophy. It goes to the school that had its best player switch to another institution.

This time it goes to Cal, now that a year after Fernando Mendoza took a hike, and in the process has taken Indiana to No. 1 in the college rankings. 

Mendoza is a quarterback and not only good enough to have led the Hoosiers to an unbeaten season—including a 13-10 win Saturday night over favored Ohio State—and very well could win the Heisman Trophy.

The Hoosiers were bottom feeders for years, a basketball school, but now, after a coaching change and recruiting success, they very much are a success in football.

You don’t know whether to feel sorry for Cal in this brave new world of shifting undergraduates and changing fortunes, or to express admiration for Indiana.

So many people complain that college football has been ruined because of the movement, both among personnel and conference alignments. You might know why Oregon is in the playoffs, the Ducks are ranked No. 5, but you might always wonder why it is in the Big Ten, after decades in a West Coast conference, where it belonged.

James Madison, winner of the Sun Belt Conference, will be in the playoffs, but the man who coached them until last weekend, Bob Chesney, will not. He’s moving to UCLA. If the athletes can change, the coaches also can change. Or is that reversed? Is it the coaches going from school to school that created the chaos with the athletes doing the same thing?  

For seasons, college football belonged to Ohio State, Notre Dame, Alabama, and USC. The Buckeyes remain a presence, No. 2 in the rankings, but Notre Dame didn’t get to the CFP. Either in disappointment or arrogance, they decided not to accept any postseason selection.

The Fighting Irish dropped two notches in the CFP rankings the past two weeks, down to No. 11, despite a 10-game winning streak. Hunter Yurachek, chairman of the committee that decides the playoff positions, told the Associated Press, “Once we moved Miami ahead of BYU — which was crushed Saturday by Texas Tech — we had the side-by-side comparison that everyone had been hungry for.”

“The committee’s other key decision during deliberations that went until 230am Sunday, was choosing James Madison over Duke for the final spot.”

Plenty of controversy, which of course makes us all more interested. Certainly, the best way to decide who belongs and who advances is on the playing field. Of course, that often is impossible, so the human element becomes a major part of the situation.  

Yes, plenty of confusion in college football. Yet so far, Mendoza and Indiana appear to be quite stable and very capable. We will know for sure in a few more weeks after the playoffs.