Dennis Marek: Today you can play for them all

Those of us who follow sports, especially college sports, have come to know the new term transfer portal.

Along with that comes NIL.

The first means that there can be college transfers from one college to another without the former requirement that the transferee must skip a year of that sport to make the change. Now there is no such rule. The transferring athlete can be immediately eligible.

This rule was probably carefully thought over by NCAA officials, but it has raised some havoc for the coaches of these teams.

Think about this. Two highly esteemed high school seniors are both excellent quarterbacks. The recruiter for the college football team, usually the head coach, realizes that he can only afford to pick one because of finances and limitations on the number of recruits that a team can select. So, the coach risks all and picks number one. Number two then signs with another school.

The next year, the number one quarterback gets a chance to move up even higher in the college ranks. He is looking for a professional career and opts out of his freshman choice via the portal and moves on. Now that coach has neither quality quarterback.

The rules have limited the number of players each university or college can sign up. No longer are walk-ons even allowed. It is all about money. NIL goes even further and lets these amateur players sell their rights to their names and can make sports deals with various sponsors. Even loyal fans of that university can throw in money.

Whether one agrees with all this or not, one player has drawn the interest of many by attending four high schools and now four colleges in his basketball career. More interesting is that this athlete started out at Kankakee High.

A.J. Storr was raised in Rockford, but through a move, played for Kankakee High. His family was already strong in basketball as his mother had played for the University of Missouri, and his sister, Ambranette, was the top scorer in Illinois while playing at Kankakee High.

After his two years here, he moved with his father to Las Vegas for his junior year. His next stop was Arizona for his senior year. There, he led his team to a 28-2 season. He then graduated from high school, but moved to Bradenton, Florida, for a “post-graduate” season at the IMG Academy. Why a fifth year in high school is not clear. He was highly recruited even out of Arizona. In Florida, Storr had originally committed to the University of Illinois, but he then decommitted to go to St. John’s even though he had offers from the likes of LSU, Kansas, and Ole Miss.

In his freshman year at St. John’s, Storr was named Freshman of the Week for the Big East Conference three times. He averaged 8.8 points per game. But at the end of that season, he signed for another transfer via the portal. That decision was made when the school announced that they were hiring Rick Patino as its head basketball coach. It seems strange not to want to play for such a well-known success.

After that freshman year at St. John’s, he was sought by even more colleges with the new portal rules. COVID-19 was raging, but Storr was out there, and the basketball folks had watched him. He had even more choices with the new portal rules. This time it was off to the University of Wisconsin for his sophomore year, where he averaged 16.8 points a game. Storr was named to the second team All-Big Ten team. But it was off again.

For whatever reason, he decided to “move up” again with one of his previous offerors. One of the best programs around was the University of Kansas. He made a switch for his third year of college. However, this year there was a bit of a disappointment for him and certainly for Kansas, which had given up a spot to bring him in. He averaged only 6.1 points per game, and his playing time was diminished. Ah, but the portal life lives on.

Storr has now signed with Ole Miss for his senior year, one of the original pursuers of this talented man. He is eligible to begin the 2025-26 season with his fourth college team. This 6-foot-6-inch shooting guard still has a chance to have that type of year that will bring the NBA around. We wish him the best. Making all those changes cannot be easy for a young man. Perhaps that is what will continue to toughen him up, and he can make the pros.