The original transfer portal, junior colleges face their own ‘last chance’ amid football’s sweeping changes

Every morning, Jason Brown hosts a free-wheeling, sometimes profanity-laced streaming presentation on X called “The Coach JB Show with Big Smitty.” Let’s just say the former junior college coach has viewpoints. He also has a website selling merch to those loyal to his side hustle, Slapdick Whiskey and Cigars.  

Yeah, it’s a free country. It’s also one that is about to change radically — football-wise — if you talk to Brown, known mostly because of his featured role on the Netflix documentary “Last Chance U.”

The show, which ran from 2016-2020, offered an inside look at junior college football. Brown became sort of an overnight sensation when his Independence (Kan.) Community College team was featured for two seasons. 

Brown hasn’t worked as a coach since his last year at Independence in 2018 — he told CBS Sports he has been blackballed — but he keeps track of his old profession. The college football world, not just JUCO ball, is in (further) upheaval since Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia sued the NCAA in November. The everyman inspiration for the Commodores contended the association violated anti-trust law by counting time served in junior college towards NCAA eligibility limits. Athletes are allowed five total years to play four years of competition. 

Pavia won an injunction in December, giving him another year of eligibility in 2025. The NCAA Council almost immediately reacted by allowing such players an extra year through the 2024-2025 academic year; the NCAA is appealing the original Pavia suit. 

Alarms immediately sounded at NCAA headquarters and football offices around the country. With the NCAA backpedaling on similar issues as the power conferences and their attorneys take over, what if the NCAA eventually allowed time served in junior college to not count against NCAA eligibility?

“Everyone from [Ole Miss coach]. Lane [Kiffin] to Sark [Texas coach Steve Sarkisian] have talked to me about it,” Brown told CBS Sports. “We’re all former JUCO guys. JUCO used to the be the transfer portal. Now it’s imploded.”

As a result, junior college and high school recruiting has taken a hit as coaches more frequently go into the portal for established talent. 

For years now, the NCAA had to measure each major decision against potential legal liability. It’s the same approach the NCAA eventually took in allowing NIL 3 ½ years ago. It has settled in House v. NCAA, which will formally usher in the play-for-pay era later this year. A patchwork of state laws emerging may even prohibit that settlement from being enforced in some jurisdictions. 

Essentially the thinking has been: What if Pavia’s suit prevails and the NCAA again chooses the path of least (legal) resistance. That is, junior college players’ eligibility clocks don’t start until they reach FBS (or any other NCAA level for that matter). Theoretically, that would mean six, possibly, seven years of eligibility.

“Now, if you do two years of untimed JUCO … what if kids say, ‘I’m not doing to go Division I out of high school anymore? I’m going to do this JUCO thing,'” Brown said. “If you do that, you get an agent … He says, ‘I’ll get you a draft status after two years of JUCO. You’ll play one for one at a four-year level.’ Those big schools will have to pay that kid for one year of service and [they’ll] enter the draft.

“It will be the Wild, Wild West times 10.”

Minor league potential

If Brown is exaggerating, it’s only by a little. Such a development would reshape the entire game. Sources tell CBS Sports there has been preliminary thought given to junior colleges formalizing a “minor league” arrangement with FBS schools. 

For years there was the unwritten code as FBS coaches would “send” prospects not quite ready for the big time to junior colleges for seasoning. 

Those were so-called “bounce backs,” who would then theoretically go back to the original FBS program that recruited them. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t, but a formal minor league model would be more substantial. Those sources aren’t ready to go on the record just yet, but one example emerged: Lackawanna College in Scranton, Pennsylvania. 

“You can certainly see a scenario where Penn State would say, ‘We’re going to assist you with hiring coaches and some funding. You just have to run our offense and our schemes,” said a person briefed on the idea who requested anonymity due the sensitive nature of the subject. “‘[We’ll help] with training table, strength and conditioning. We’re just going to send all of our student-athletes who are not ready straight for the major leagues straight to your schools.'”

To be clear, there is absolutely no such arrangement known between Penn State and Lackawanna. But the Pavia lawsuit has opened the door to some creative thinking. 

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all [for it to become a minor league],” said Scott Strohmeier, who has won three junior college national championships at Iowa Western Community College. “I’ve been doing this for 19 years. There’s never been [more] JUCO players that needed this avenue to make it.”

The percentage of junior college players that populate FBS rosters is hard to nail down. Some schools emphasize JUCO recruiting differently than others. Having too many JUCOs used to be a curse to roster stability because they were, at most, two-year pass throughs. The transfer portal has basically created the same structure. As Sarkisian has said frequently, in the new landscape it’s either “adapt or die.” 

Strohmeier said the transfer portal has put less of a recruiting emphasis on high school and JUCO players for NCAA programs. The coach said in 2016 he had 10 players transfer to Power Four schools. In 2024, that number was zero. 

“What you’re seeing is schools with a lot of money, they’re not recruiting JUCO,” Strohmeier said. “They’re going to the backup at Iowa State or Oklahoma.”

“Every D-I coach in the country that talks to me, is like, man, ‘JUCO is not JUCO,'” Brown added. “You’re not getting the Alabama kids no more, you’re not getting the transfer, you’re not getting the bounce back. You’re not getting the kid that even gets kicked out for smoking weed or some kind of minor credit card fraud.”

It is certainly a different world at the JUCO level. Former Garden City (Kan.) Community College coach Jeff Sims once waited outside a prison for a prospect that had done 3 ½ years for armed robbery. Sims accepted Alex Figueroa after the former linebacker was dismissed at Miami after being accused of sexual battery. Figueroa maintained the sex was consensual. 

Dolphins’ receiver Tyreek Hill, who did not play under Sims, was a two-time All-American at Garden City before finishing at Division II. 

“We don’t go 10 for 10 [in recruiting character athletes],” Sims once told CBS Sports. “We go 10 for 30.”

Until recently, Oregon defensive lineman Jamaree Caldwell was considering an attempt at another year after seeing Pavia’s lawsuit. The 332-pound defensive lineman came out of Newberry, South Carolina, to play at Hutchinson, Independence and then Houston before heading to the Ducks, where he became an All-Big Ten honorable mention. 

His JUCO story is not uncommon. After academic problems in high school, Caldwell found himself walking on at Independence. (Brown was not his coach.)

“Everything you see on the show [‘Last Chance U’} was the same,” Caldwell said. “How crazy it is, how hard it is. You could see a lot of people come in with a dream and leave without one — or leave with one.”

Caldwell arrived as an overweight, out-of-shape weight on the program. At 400 pounds, he said teammates were made to repeat sprints because he couldn’t keep up.

“Cussed out, yelled at,” Caldwell recalled. “I’m glad I went through it. I feel like a lot of people in that situation would burst. Everybody on the team was mad at me.”

His life changed when Caldwell noticed one day New Mexico football had begun following him on Twitter.

“That’s when I realized I could go somewhere and play,” he said. 

A minor league model would possibly invigorate the JUCOs with better talent. Brown claims 100 of his junior college players have transfered to Division I schools. There are 28 currently in the NFL, eight of whom have played in Super Bowls, and 24 Pro Bowlers. All that during a 22-year coaching career. 

“I don’t know if there is anyone who rivals my résumé, and I’ve only coached JUCO,” Brown said. 

“You’re going to have 27, 28-year-olds continuing to look for NIL deals,” he added. “They’re going to be at four or five schools. The NCAA needs to be honest and come out and say they’re no longer student-athletes.”

For this discussion, prep schools are private elite athletic technical institutions that allow athletes to develop their skills in a high school setting. One example is prestigious IMG Academy.

“The coaching is an interesting profession because you’re always looking for an advantage,” said Thom McDonald, commissioner of the Iowa Community College Athletic Conference. “You’re always looking for a way around the rules without breaking the rules. The prep schools came out of a necessity for these young men and women to retain their eligibility and get a chance to play.” 

Despite the high school connection, prep school athletes typically live on the campus. Their NCAA eligibility clocks aren’t impacted. 

“My phone was blowing when that thing passed,” Strohmeier said of the injunction. “They were thinking JUCOs were going to be a prep school. If you finished your eligibility this year, [they could] grant you another year.” 

Distant relationship with NCAA 

The first junior college was founded in 1901. Some four-year college presidents back then concluded the first two years of college were not necessarily broad-based “university-level” classes. Over time, JUCOs became a haven for students who couldn’t afford or weren’t academically ready for a four-year college. 

The National Junior College Athletic Association has been around since 1938. Its 514 schools are about half of the NCAA total. Its budget just a fraction of the NCAA’s $1 billion. The state of California has a separate community college athletic association. 

NJCAA president and CEO Christian Parker describes his relationship with NCAA president Charlie Baker as “nonexistent”. 

“I have made efforts to connect with Charlie Baker to work together for the good of all students,” Parker said, “But we haven’t received any indication of Charlie’s willingness to do so collaboratively.”

The lack of connection is understandable. The NCAA is battling for its very existence. Baker is busy managing the House settlement, lobbying in Congress and dealing with lawsuits that seem to be filed almost daily.

Meanwhile, the list of famous former JUCO players populate varous hall of fames – Jackie Robinson, Albert Pujols, Bryce Harper, as well a pair of Heisman winners, Roger Staubach and Cam Newton. Georgia’s Stetson Bennett won a pair of championships after attending Jones College in Ellisville, Mississippi. 

NCJAA leadership is beginning to wonder why JUCOs should be treated differently in terms of eligibility. The association is particularly concerned regarding transfer eligibility. JUCO transfers must have a 2.5 GPA. Four-year transfers need only a 2.0. 

“Why is the general population — who goes to class for band, or goes to school for geometry — only need a 2.0. It makes zero sense,” Brown said. 

Transfers between four-year schools are guaranteed a scholarship until they complete their undergrad degree. In certain cases, an athlete can voluntarily leave the team or be dismissed and retain their scholarship. JUCO players do not get that guarantee. 

“We are not in favor of any rule that makes it more difficult for two-year students to transfer to a four-year college,” Parker said. 

Once that eligibility begins, athletes have five years to play four in the NCAA’s eyes. There is a growing sentiment to expand that to five years’ eligibility to account for transfers and the COVID-19 year. Brown explained it above: Inside of those five years, could be the one or two junior college seasons. 

Part of the so-called “five for five” rationale is that it would do away with application for hardship waivers and the clunky rule that allows football players to opt out of a season and retain the year of eligibility before participating in a fifth game. 

“This isn’t a new concept,” Iowa professor Joshua Lens said of the five-for-five idea. Lens specializes in sports business. “There are some athletics administrators who have clamored for this for decades … Only a matter of time before that gets extended to other sports. The hardship waivers, we don’t need to mess around with that anymore if we go five for five.“ 

In that case, players could develop for one or two years in junior college and still have up to three years left at an NCAA program. Having formal agreements with four-year schools could partially solve the uncertainty of the transfer portal as well. 

Example: Minor baseball league teams are operated by separate owners but affiliated with the Major League teams to provide talent. Such an arrangement would force college sports as an entity to choose its own hypocrisy. If one-and-done is bad in basketball, then what’s wrong with seven years of eligibility?

Do JUCO players have market value?

States or schools that didn’t participate in the so-called “minor league” might soon find themselves behind competitively. It’s that type of mentality that spawned the patchwork of state NIL laws to benefit State U on the field. Several states currently have laws prohibiting not only the NCAA from interfering with schools directly paying players, but any scrutiny of the fair market value of deals. 

The idea of such monetization of junior colleges is not new. Netflix had the idea of chronicling the low-resourced world of junior college football beginning in 2015 with East Mississippi Community College. Good old boy coach Buddy Stephens, quarterback John Franklin III and academic advisor Brittany Wagner quickly became minor celebrities.

But six former EMCC players — including Franklin — recently sued Netflix, their former school and the NJCAA for $30 million alleging they were not properly compensated for their work on “Last Chance U.” 

The six athletes played in 2015-2016. While $30 million might be a wildly exaggerated figure for a junior college documentary, the thought has emerged. What if the schools and/or NJCAA and schools marketed their rights for such a doc? 

“The idea that the ‘Last Chance U’ players who nobody ever heard of would have any brand recognition [is doubtful],” said a veteran documentarian who did not want to be identified. 

The NJCAA does have a multi-year agreement with ESPN to televise its championships on various platforms. 

Brown says Independence got $30,000 from Netflix, but that he and the players received little to no compensation. In that sense, the documentary made the subjects celebrities instead of the usual model – a documentary digging deep on an established public figure such Deion Sanders or Bobby Knight.

But sometimes the subject matter is greater than name brand recognition. “Last Chance U” won an Emmy in 2020 for Outstanding Serialized Documentary. 

Meanwhile, after evaluating their options, players like Caldwell have moved on. After a five-year journey through JUCO and FBS, he has declared for the draft. Caldwell’s combine score ranked 27th this week among defensive linemen. 

All of it was worth the wait. 

“If you want to know if you love football or not,” he said, “go to junior college.”