The next time you hear a coach whine about how unfair the transfer portal is, mention the name Anthony Watkins to him.
On Friday, Missouri running back Anthony Watkins entered his name in the transfer portal. He was coming off a redshirt freshman year where he saw action in just one game, rushing for 19 yards.
However, according to Watkins, the choice to leave Mizzou wasn’t his.
“I had received a call last week on Wednesday from my running back coach, Curtis Luper,” Watkins explained. “He reached out to me and was like, ‘I got some bad news’ and told me ‘Well, you’re still on scholarship, that’s not being taken away from you, but you will no longer be on the team.'”
Luper’s explanation of the situation raised a lot of questions with the Fort Worth, Texas native.
“He said the reason was because they were starting to lose scholarships and they are running low,” Watkins detailed. “And I couldn’t understand that because the ban was so long ago where they are eligible to play in a bowl now, so what does that have to do with me? I just felt like something shady was going on.”
“We’re not taking away your scholarship, but we’re kicking you off the team because we’re low on scholarships” makes about as much sense as anything else in college football these days, I guess.
This has got to be a tough story for the “unforeseen consequences of a one-time transfer waiver rule” crowd to swallow, too, now that I think about it. Sad!
Get The Picture 
Agree with your point here Senator. Also, what tone deaf MF’s the Mizos folks must be!
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Roster management for the win! Would love to know how they planned on keeping him on scholarship without impacting their numbers? Drinkwitz comes across looking like a stooge.
The NCAA could write a book on the law of unintended consequences (e.g. targeting, tranfer portal, 4 game redshirt)
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Strictly a guess here, but I would suspect that Mizzou would place him on some kind of general scholarship like a regular student. Since he would no longer be a part of the team would that no longer count against their limit? They can have the political cover of we are taking care of his education since the “student” in student athlete comes first. If he is not a problem child, and has any talent, they know he will leave for greener pastures and solve all their problems but they will be able to thump their chest and say “we tried”.
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Drinkwitz knew the kid would transfer because the kid wants to play CFB. That’s why he had his minion tell the kid that. Voila! Problem solved! Kid gone, one more scholly.
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Bingo.
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I kinda feel sorry for the kid. But if he was good enough to be offered by an SEC team in the first place, surely some school will pick him up soon…and he won’t be buried on the depth chart. As far as him still being on scholarship goes..a head-scratcher…maybe they’re just playing head games to get him to withdraw his name from the xfer portal.
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Sorry, I must not be reading/interpreting this correctly because all of you seem bent over this. He wasn’t kicked off the team because he entered the portal since he was kicked off two days before he put his name in there. He was removed from the team to allow a head coach to upgrade the talent on his new team, and was provided a full scholarship, just not from the football allowance of 85. What is wrong, or surprising, about th
The coach may be wrong in his talent assessment of the young man, but he didn’t treat him badly. I would expect this crowd to be all shaky if he had been dropped because of entering the portal, but this isn’t even a related issue.
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Give me a fucking break, Mac. You tell a football player he’s no longer a member of the team and you expect him to retire, stay in school and get his degree?
The “offer”, such as it was, was nothing more than an instruction to find some other place. The tell was Roper’s explanation that the program was short on scholarships.
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I don’t disagree that he was told to find another place to play. I guess I am confused on the no longer part of the team piece. I thought scholarships are year to year and theoretically, your scholly might be yanked without you being told you are no longer part of the team… walk ons abound in lots of programs. And if they had an academic scholarship available, why would he no longer be part of the team. Just seems strange.
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Drinkwitz’s homina homina homina moment was weak. I get roster management, but the head coach needs to be a man about it.
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I totally agree with that — not a good look at all. I just scratch my head on the “no longer part of the team” thing.
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LMAO Senator. No you get no break for this level of thinking. You have solid ground to find this weak if they cut him loose, and he was making an effort, just didn’t live up to their evaluation, but leaving him on full scholarship.
Excuse me a moment, let me wipe the tears out of my eyes. A student in college is being leveled with about his talent assessment, no punishment is being given, and you feel this is where he should be given a snuggle doll and a “counselor”? This is not child, he is an adult, and being treated like one. Well, maybe; situations like this is the real world don’t often come with such a soft landing. We send young men and women to college to prepare them for life, and you want to give them a participation trophy?
No, you give me a break, this isn’t preparing them for what comes later. And this isn’t exactly leaving him without other options if he thinks he has been misjudged and wants to prove them wrong…that has happened before, and I hope is one of the winners who gets off the deck and proves others wrong.
Bleeding hearts for $100 Alex. Sometimes I am not sure some of you have ever seen tough things in life, or ever traveled where really sad things happen to good people regularly. Keep kicking that can down the road, there is a payment headed everyone’s way in the near future.
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You remind me of that angry dad juror in 12 Angry Men. 😂😂😂
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I am sure you realize how meaningless your assessment of people you don’t know is regarded so I won’t waste the time. But I do understand there are many people who simply aren’t comfortable in big boy pants. Go curl up in the corner with your snuggle doll if it makes you feel better and you don’t like discussions of adult realities. Don’t worry, I am not angry with you at all. We all see a lot of it these days.
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I can’t help who you remind me of, brother.
Note, I didn’t say “I have made an assessment that you are just like the angry dad juror” I just said you remind me of him. Maybe it was the “bleeding hearts” phrase, which he uses more than once in the old movie.
At different times in my life I’ve been told I reminded people of:
1) Jim Carrey
2) Donnie Osmond
3) Rock Hudson
4) That young scared dude in Saving Private Ryan who listens to the solider being killed by the German on the stairs
5) the dude from “50 Shades of Grey”
As far as I know I’m not like any of them. Can’t help who I remind people of, really, though.
Plus when I think of what it means to wear “big boy pants” it’s probably a little different than how you’d define it.
As for your comment about making “assessment of people”, you’re the one who’s doing the majority of that in this exchange. You’re the one who said, “Sometimes I am not sure some of you have ever seen tough things in life, or ever traveled where really sad things happen to good people regularly.”
What a monumentally foolish thing to say. Nothing like the person who says of those who disagree with them, “You don’t know! You haven’t been through what I’ve been through!” In my opinion the person who uses this way of dismissing differing opinions is the person who actually needs some big boy pants.
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There’s no crying in college football, Mac. 😉
Seriously, you’ve done a tremendous job of completely misunderstanding the point of my post. It ain’t about teaching the kid life lessons (although if you read his last comments, it seems he’s already ahead of you there).
It’s that college coaches are full of shit about the trials and tribulations of the transfer portal. They want to be in control at all times and this is a threat to that control. That is all.
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