Junior College Football - Build It or Buy It?

For decades college football has had the luxury of the junior college football programs around the country. Talented high school players who for whatever reason did not get an offer at a D1 program go the path of the JUCO route. This has been a major development path for many schools. We now have the Transfer Portal (TP) and the JUCOs combined so the talent pools are going to be very intriguing when looking at how the schools decided on where to turn for the competitive build-out of their rosters each season.

While many will not argue about the financial rights of the athletes to gain economically on their NIL good fortune I for one believe a level of management needs to be discussed and hopefully applied to the timing and ability to actively pursue change from both sides of the equation. The sport is in chaos for all the right reasons. This was very predictable to see where we would end up in chaos such as today's first introduction of the powerful one-two punch of the TP and NIL combined.

The JUCO for years has been a minor league partner to D1 schools. Localized in most cases where a junior college is tied at the hip of a major program and players are routinely watched and offered upward paths to the level of division one overtime in their first two seasons. JUCOs offer players who may not qualify academically to go make it happen and rebuild their academic shortfalls to better position themselves to qualify. The stronger the relationship between the D1 and JUCO the better the path for success with the players and programs coming. together in time.

It's interesting to look at the Top 10 of 50 in the snapshot above and notice who the schools are that are targeting this elite list of the JUCO talent.

Fight On!