Dino Babers talks NIL, transfer portal losses in exclusive interview: ‘We lost an NFL player’

Charlotte, N.C. — Dino Babers knows better than anyone that Syracuse football lost high-caliber players in the 2022-23 transfer portal cycle.
First it was defensive lineman Steve Linton, safety Ja’Had Carter and cornerback Duce Chestnut in early December. All three were four-star transfers and key contributors to SU’s defense.
Then at the end of spring camp, in the second transfer portal window, there were two more blows: defensive lineman Jatius Geer and quarterback Justin Lamson.
“JT I think is an NFL player,” Babers said Tuesday. “We lost an NFL player. And Lamson, I thought Lamson was good. And he’s gone.”
Babers’ comments came in an interview with syracuse.com at ACC Kickoff, where the eighth-year coach talked about two of the biggest topics in college sports — name, image and likeness and the transfer portal.
SU lost 12 players in the transfer portal, a relatively small amount compared to some of its conference peers. But there’s a magnitude to nearly half of those being depth-chart players.
“When you lose guys to the transfer portal, you normally don’t lose bad guys,” he said with a chuckle.
Babers repeated a sentiment that losing guys like Carter and Geer hurts most when it comes to experience. He said that’s harder to replace than the athletic talent those guys hold.
All five of the Orange’s key losses were entering at least their third season, and all five transferred to other Power Five schools.
Linton is at Texas Tech, a program that has popped up in early preseason Top 25 predictions. Carter went to Ohio State, and Chestnut landed at LSU. Geer and Lamson both went to schools near their hometowns, the former to the University of South Carolina and the latter to Stanford.
While pinning down the exact reason a player chooses to transfer can be tricky, how much players are getting paid is a factor programs have to keep in mind when assessing how to keep top talent.
Last August, recruiting website On3 included The Foundation at Ohio State, The Matador Club at Texas Tech and Garnet Trust at South Carolina on its Top 20 most ambitious NIL collectives list.
Carter entered a partnership with The Foundation in late January and a second collective in early February. It’s unclear which of SU’s other transfers have signed with collectives or found other name, image and likeness deals.
Syracuse has managed to keep some of its stars. Tight end Oronde Gadsden II said he turned down money to stay at SU. But keeping every contributor, let alone every projected contributor, requires a deep well.
Asked if he agreed with an assessment Syracuse athletic director John Wildhack made last month that the Orange is “in a better place” with NIL than it was this spring, Babers seemed to indicate there is still work to be done.
“I would say that I’m waiting for all the rules to get changed so that everybody can be on equal playing field,” Babers said. “I don’t know if that will ever happen, and if that’s not going to happen, then we need to be ready to go.”
National legislation for NIL was one of the main talking points in ACC commissioner Jim Phillips’ morning forum Tuesday.
He spoke of the need for consistent disclosure of deals with the creation of national guidelines for NIL through Congress and the need for enforcement of NCAA rules that remain on the books.
Last month, Wildhack advocated for a national disclosure system for NIL deals.
Babers said that type of database would “take the rumors” out of NIL.
“Everybody wants to know what everybody’s making,” Babers said. “You wanna do something like that, (but) we’re a private school. There’s things that we keep private that public schools can’t.
“So I don’t know, do we act like a private school or do all the private schools act like private schools? Or do they open it up and tell the truth like all the public schools?”
It’s a fair question.
It’s also a question there likely won’t be an answer to anytime soon.