Jeff Goodman, a national college basketball analyst and co-founder of Field of 68 has come up with a novel idea for basketball – and his idea could expand to other sports as well. The spring college basketball transfer portal closes on April 22nd. By then, well over 2,000 “student”-athletes will have stated their intention to leave their schools for another program.

Goodman suggests developing a transfer fee similar to what is seen in European soccer. Instead of penalizing student-athletes, the fee would be paid by the school signing the transferring player to the student-athlete’s former school.

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Why the compensation?

Schools recruit, educate, develop, coach, and support their student-athletes. When a student-athlete departs for another program, the cost cycle starts over again for a school losing a player(s). Goodman suggests that a school that recruits a portal player receives the benefits of the time, money, and effort spent developing the student-athletes. Thus, the new school should reimburse the prior school for their cost and new effort required to fill that spot on their roster.

Goodman didn’t lay out an exact formula, but it might look something like this:

Power-Three (ACC, Big XII, & SEC) to Power-Three – $50k

Mid-Major player to Power-Three -$35k

Mid-major player to Mid-major – $15k

Division II player to Mid-Major – $7k

JUCO player to Mid-Major or Power-Three – $5k

The objective would be to not penalize student-athletes while rewarding a program for their costs and effort in developing talent. In turn, this money could be used to reinvest in recruiting and development of new student-athletes to fill open spots.