Vince Marrow (Vicky Graff Photo)
Kentucky recruiting coordinator Vince Marrow understands how much his job is going to change if the NCAA’s one-time transfer rule with immediate eligibility is implemented in the next few months. That would make keeping a close eye on the transfer portal as important as knowing the nation’s best high school recruits.
Marrow says it will basically be the same type recruitment NFL teams have to do with free agents as well as evaluating college talent.
“People don’t want to address it, but to me, it’s like a mini version of the NFL,” Marrow said before the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl. “You used to just have to worry about high school.
“In the pros, they’ve got a college director and a pro personnel director. The pro personnel director just looks at other guys on other teams they may want to sign when their contracts are up, and a college director deals with the college things. That’s kind of like us now.”
Marrow doesn’t sound like he is overwhelmed by the idea. If anything, he seems excited by the challenge and what it could do for the Kentucky program.
“We’ve got high school where we deal with the high school stuff, but now we’ve got to, let’s be honest, you have to look at other rosters to plug guys off,” Marrow said. “If he goes to the transfer portal, you get a guy who played a year or two years, that’s like getting a junior college guy who don’t have to sit out.
“It’s a new world and we’re gonna have to adjust to it. It’s definitely, definitely going to take recruiting to another level.”
That’s similar to what Jai Lucas said when John Calipari brought him on board as a recruiting coordinator because of the anticipated need to cope with the expected transfer change.
