With top teams spending top dollar to snipe top talent, the primary critique of the transfer portal has become how it impacts Mid-Major programs. However, through strong cultures and kept promises, the Mid-American Conference has built a unique relationship with the transfer portal.
A look at the top transfers shows this on a magnified perspective. Among the 1,700-plus players in the transfer portal, players such as Bennett Stirtz and Donovan Dent, who led Mid-Major programs to the NCAA Tournament this season, will appear for Power Four teams in 2025-26.
Largely, the MAC stands as an outlier in this regard. The largest example is the conference’s champion, Akron, which returned every non-graduating member of its championship squad after a first-round loss to Arizona in the NCAA Tournament.
One major reason for this is money. Akron enters the 2025-26 season in the top half of the conference in estimated revenue sharing, with nearly $600,000 more to spend than a team like Ohio, which sits eighth and has lost two players, Elmore James and Ben Nicol, to the portal.
For Akron specifically, that money allowed them to utilize the transfer portal to help build its roster, taking the unwanted pieces from Power Four rosters to build an NCAA Tournament team. One such player was starting center James Okonkwo, who had previously played for North Carolina and West Virginia.
“They had a lot of money to spend,” Ohio coach Jeff Boals said during the season. “(Akron’s) done a good job of bringing new guys in and blending them in with some returners that they had.”
Several notable players have transferred out of the MAC. Toledo has been hit the hardest of the conference’s 12 teams, losing two of its three All-MAC selectees in second-teamer Sam Lewis and honorable mention Javan Simmons.
Additionally, several other All-MAC selectees such as Central Michigan’s Ugnius Jarusevicius, Miami’s Kam Craft, Bowling Green’s Marcus Johnson and Ball State’s Jermahri Hill have sought greener grass through the transfer portal. For these teams, the losses will be hard to replace, but these cases have turned into the outliers.
As previously mentioned, teams such as Akron and Ohio have managed to maintain the majority of their rosters. Aside from money, which is far limited in comparison to the MAC’s Power Four contemporaries, culture is the grounding aspect keeping players in town.
A prime example is Ohio All-MAC selectees AJ Clayton and Shereef Mitchell, who both elected to play their last collegiate seasons in Athens despite money on the table from other teams last Summer. Boals made it a point to credit their loyalty to the program in his concluding press conference at the MAC Tournament.
“AJ Clayton and Shereef Mitchell, both those guys could have left last year and made a lot more money, but they trusted us,” Boals said.
One area where the MAC stands out is the tenure of its coaches. Kent State’s Rob Senderoff and Toledo’s Tod Kowalczyk will both enter their 15th seasons with their teams in 2025-26, while many others, such as Boals or Akron’s John Groce, have spent well over half a decade with their program.
All these factors help to contribute to the unique relationship the MAC has built with the transfer portal. Of course, players will leave, but the MAC has established itself as a place for players to live out fruitful careers with a program with ample earning opportunity and the ability to learn and grow within a developed culture.
