There has been plenty of hubbub lately about how high school football in Florida has turned into a swinging door of transfers. There have been more than 100 transfers during this offseason in Orange County, and it’s difficult to even keep track of where everyone is going.
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During the Central Florida Media Day for Orange and Osceola counties on Saturday at 407 Sports in Ocoee, several veteran coaches sounded off on the subject. Perhaps the most colorful was 20th-year Winter Park coach Tim Shifflet.
For the first time in his 20 years of coaching, Shifflet showed up to a media-day event. He was in typical form. Shifflet, a native of Buffalo, N.Y., and the son of a football coach, rarely holds back and Saturday was no different.
He started off by applauding the T-shirt worn by Tavares coach Gavin Jones at the Lake County portion of Media Days in Lake Mary on Thursday. Jones, who has lost 18 transfers from his team this offseason, sported a T-shirt that read “We Coach, They Poach,” referring to coaches he has alleged to have recruited his players away from Tavares.
“That was kind of a catchy thing. I like that,” Shifflet said.
Winter Park used to get its fair share of transfers over the years and Shifflet has been accused of wrongdoings by plenty of other coaches, but in the past two seasons, he has watched many of his own players scatter to other schools. This year alone, Winter Park lost five players to Lake Nona.
“It’s an absolute disaster and everybody knows it,” Shifflet said, “and nobody is in position or seems to want to step up and do anything about it.”
Shifflet points to state legislation, which has made laws, such as the 2016 Open Enrollment Law, that have handcuffed the state’s governing athletic body, the Florida High School Athletics Association, from being able to create its own rules to regulate transfers or address other issues.
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“The state of Florida has stripped the FHSAA of all their power. This open seat thing was intended to be one thing and has turned into another,” Shifflet said. “The state organization has no teeth; it’s been taken away. I think they’ve tried over the years, but when the political parties take control of every decision they make and how they make it, everything just leans toward private schools and private education.
“I don’t think they saw the ramifications, nor do I think they care that it’s completely out of control. Now they are just trying to hold on to their agenda, which is, basically, I think, trying to privatize education.”
Shifflet also pointed out the current state of college sports with the NCAA transfer portal and the NIL era as another reason why high school sports has taken its recent turn into territories from which some think it will never return. Money has started to enter into the equation with high school athletes, players cannot only legally accept NIL deals at the prep level, but there is also money being tossed around illegally, as athletes are enticed to transfer to certain schools.
All of the recent changes in college football have been a direct result of how money has taken over college sports. These trends are now starting to seep their way into high school sports.
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“I’ve always believed things roll downhill. I think the state of affairs in college football, and the way things are run and the way things are completely out of control … it rolls down to the high schools,” Shifflet said. “So take the college concept, and how it’s who has the most money is the most successful, that rolls downhill.
“Parents see that and are influenced by that. They see it and they think, ‘Well, heck, we need to get our student athletes in the position in high school where they need to be successful and they need to be treated the right way and they need to be given things at school X, Y or Z. It’s really hurting football more than any other sports.”
And he points to the rich-get-richer theory.
“It has gutted the middle class of high school football,” he said. “And if you are not doing the things you need to do at your high school, from your school district, to your administration at the school, to your community, to your coaches, to keep kids, then you are going to fall by the wayside.
“And for some of these programs, I feel so bad. I see programs that are a shell of what they used to be.”
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Many coaches have started to accept the new world of high school football — the transfer era —as being the way it will always be. Travis Gabriel at Olympia High and Marlin Roberts at Kissimmee Gateway throw up their arms as if to surrender with a white flag.
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Gabriel and many other coaches question the lack of loyalty. No one is loyal to their school anymore and players are quick to jump across enemy lines.
“I simplify my thought process with this,” said Gabriel, who enters his eighth year at Olympia. “At the 10-year reunion or the 20-year reunion, what school do you go to? What legacy do you live by? I know for me personally, I am a Miami Northwestern Bull for life. I went there all four years. That’s my school.
“I just think the trajectory moving forward, if this continues, is not going to get better.”
It makes it particularly difficult to build a solid foundation from a youth standpoint when you are building up underclassmen only to see them leave in two years.
“You can’t really do too much with it. One year you got this group and the next year you might have a totally different group,” Gabriel said. “You lose kids, you gain kids. It’s just moving chairs. That’s all it is. So when people ask me about this year, ‘How do you look?’ Well, we don’t know. We’ll see who shows up at practice on Monday.
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“It sucks. You build relationships with kids and then they’re gone. With the relationship piece, it hurts when you lose kids that you watched grow up, and then all the sudden they leave.”
And there is nothing that can be done about it.
“All you do is wish them the best,” Gabriel said. “You try not to feel because it takes focus away from the kids who are still there. I would rather put my focus on the kids who are still at my school rather than worry about who left. We coach whoever shows up.”
Marlin Roberts: I’ll coach what I have
Roberts began to accept years ago that he was going to lose kids to traditional powerhouse Kissimmee Osceola. It doesn’t mean he’s happy about it, and he’s not pointing fingers, but he knows that’s the way it is, and it’s not only Osceola. Other schools have also gained Gateway transfers.
“We take pride in developing these kids and then coaches come in here and snatch them up from you,” Roberts said. “It’s aggravating, but at the same time, you look at it and you think, ‘Well, we must be doing something right to develop them and have somebody come in and try to poach them. … We’re trying to build our program up at Gateway and that’s all we can do.”
Roberts is in his 18th year at Gateway and he has settled down, a far more easygoing coach than what might have appeared to be a grouchy one in his younger years. Now he laughs and he’s just happy to be doing what he’s doing.
“I’m on the back nine now, and I used to get mad and all that when guys would leave, but now I’m gonna coach what I have,” Roberts said. “There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s nothing but a transfer portal.”
Rick Darlington: It’s phagocytosis
Rick Darlington, a veteran of more than 20 years as a head football coach, going into year five at DeLand, has not been affected by transfers, but he said the current situation was inevitable.
“We knew this was gonna happen,” Darlington said. “When they said ‘open enrollment,’ well, kids want to play for a winner or they want to get exposure or they want to play with their 7-on-7 buddies, or whatever …
“There is a biological term called phagocytosis, where this large cell sucks in all of the stuff around it … that’s what happens. … So, if your program is good, it is attracting players. … The rich will keep getting richer and the poor will continue to be poor. You’re gonna see more teams go independent or go to the Sunshine league.”
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Chris Hays can be found on X.com @OS_ChrisHays.