The Baylor Bears haven’t had a good last few weeks. The starry Duke roster ended their campaign, which meant they went out in the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the fourth-straight year. Champions in 2021, it capped off the least successful season in the past seven years, and if their fans thought this was painful enough, the transfer portal just piled on their misery. Remember, last off-season, when Arkansas saw nearly its entire roster turn over? Well, Baylor just had an overhaul of their own, and it’s somehow even more extreme. For a program that lifted the national championship trophy just four years ago, the contrast couldn’t be sharper.

Many might say that the team’s coach, Scott Drew, is no stranger to building a talented roster from scratch. He did it when he arrived at Baylor in 2003 and has continued to do so in his over two-decade tenure. But this isn’t a rebuilding task; this is starting from zero. Drew has to set up a team literally from scratch.

With starting center Josh Ojianwuna deciding to enter the portal, the Bears’ entire roster has vanished! Nine of the 14 players entered the transfer portal, four exhausted their eligibility, and one declared for the NBA Draft, leaving Baylor with zero returning players for the 2025-26 season. Fans and analysts could not ignore the concerning development.

Barstool Sports’ Reags put out a blog post to voice his displeasure. He criticized the transfer portal and what it has done to college basketball. “Here we are looking at Baylor, a team who won a title in 2021, a team who made the Tournament, they have to replace every single person on the roster. 9 of the 14 are in the transfer portal. This is why the transfer portal is stupid.” Reags wrote in the blog entry, and it makes sense!

According to the reporter, athletes should only have one free transfer in their careers. Establishing a proper free agency with amateur athletes doesn’t end well for most people, and we’re watching its effects live with Baylor. We can’t blame the athletes either, because they’re being thrown a bag and they cannot refuse.

Baylor had a talented roster at their disposal. The spotlight belonged to VJ Edgecombe, the electric freshman who earned Freshman of the Year honors and landed on the All-Big 12 Second Team before declaring for the NBA. Veteran forward Norchad Omier anchored the squad with a First-Team All-Big 12 nod in his final collegiate season, while rising star Robert Wright III made enough noise to earn an honorable mention but left for BYU in a deal that will cost the Cougars reportedly more than $3 million. That right there highlights the problem with NIL.

As good as NIL is for the sport, the transfer portal does have consequences. Big coaches like John Calipari in Arkansas have spoken out against it after he saw his roster nearly wiped out, and it has made them hesitant during player development. This year, the numbers speak for themselves.

Since the transfer portal opened on March 24, it’s been a full-on stampede. Over 2,000 Division I men’s basketball players have jumped in, making up roughly 35% of the entire college hoops population. That’s more than a third of rosters nationwide hitting the reset button, turning this offseason into one of the most chaotic in recent memory.

At Baylor, the rebuild is already in motion. Scott Drew has filled six roster spots so far, with five players committing via the transfer portal and five-star phenom Tounde Yessoufou standing as the lone incoming freshman. It’s a foundation, but the Bears still have a long climb ahead.

Meanwhile, the fans, on the other hand, are calling this situation for what it is–an embarrassment.

Fans call out Scott Drew for huge NCAA humiliation

Losing your entire team is a rough blow for any coach, even one as decorated as Scott Drew. To many, his remarkable feats, like the 2021 NCAA championship, now seem like a distant dream. And remember when he took over the team in 2003 after a scandal, when practice was only two months away with the season opener looming ghostly above his head??

So, fans, as expected, aren’t rocking with this shocking new update. “Baylor lost their whole Basketball team! How is this allowed to happen? Embarrassing!” A fan said on X, and it was a common sentiment! And how could it not be? In 2021, even Matt Sayman had said, “But most people don’t really know how far to the bottom we were.”

After that abovementioned scandal, only a handful of scholarship players remained with the team. Sayman, being one of them, even wrote a book about those who stayed, calling it “The Leftovers”. So, you see, how hard it must have been to curate a winning recipe out of just eggs and salt for Drew?

Fast forward to now, and Scott Drew needs to stay on high alert. “This is when we see just how good the coach really is,” said one user while another went, “scott drew has lost the locker room down in waco?? the streets are saying.”

Baylor went 8-21 in his first year as a coach there. If you think that is nothing remarkable, then just read Sayman’s words again, and you’d know how deep in the waters the team was. No one expected those eight wins. And the three Big 12 games they won? That could only be done with the help of some pixie dust. After that, he never stopped, turning the team into a national contender. It was like the neighborhood kid grew up and started to beat you in races.

Yet, let us not lose track and acknowledge that the transfer portal might have undone years of stability. Users on X made sure to point out just how fickle the transfer portal actually is, and how the NCAA is afraid of stepping in.

“They are afraid to step in because they blew it day 1. Now they need a wrecking ball and will never take that approach. What will happen is schools start dropping programs. Baylor’s entire basketball team entered the Portal.” One fan said, pointing out a serious danger to college basketball.

After all, this free-agency has shifted D1 ball to something akin to the professional leagues. “not fun anymore – it is becoming the nba” A user said. However, other teams don’t have it as bad as Baylor for sure! Another fan put the entire situation into perspective. “If you think your college basketball team has it bad with NIL and the transfer portal, look at Baylor and Indiana.”

To understand the dangers that the transfer portal poses, consider the following. The 291 players that entered the transfer portal on the first day in 2024 were a record-setting figure. Meanwhile, this year, that number ballooned to 700, just blowing everything out of proportion. The NIL deals play a great role in this mass exodus, with players shifting colleges seeking better cashing opportunities.  And the feelings around this were best captured by Jaden Miller, who wrote for the Daily Tar Heel.

“What good does it do to get a superstar who cares not at all for the school, but for the money and the chance of reaching the pros? I struggle to sit and watch these superhuman athletes play when I know they are incentivized to care less and less for the name on their shirt,” he said.

But, yes, going back to Drew, not all fingers are pointed at him. One user made it clear, saying, “He (Wright) mentioned all of the things that Scott Drew is precisely known for and still left. It’s clearly about the money. The real question would be “why lie?” However, one laid out other facts, saying, “Kevin Young has coached more NBA players than Scott Drew.”

So, Drew, once hailed for his “Culture of JOY,” now faces criticism for failing to retain talent. With the task he has ahead of him, it will be interesting to see how he manages it. Rebuilding a roster from scratch is not easy, but Drew has done tougher things. This might be just what Baylor needed to shed old baggage and look towards another title run!