New Auburn head coach Alex Golesh isn’t sugarcoating the state of college football’s transfer portal. In fact, he’s calling it like it is: a wide-open, often murky system where tampering has become part of the landscape-and where the line between aggressive recruiting and rule-breaking has all but disappeared.
“(Tampering's) been going on for a really long time,” Golesh said. “This portal era amplified it in every imaginable way.”
Golesh, who just made the jump from South Florida to the SEC, isn’t pretending the recruiting battles are any cleaner in college football’s top conference. If anything, he sees the same game-just with higher stakes and brighter lights.
The difference now? The transfer portal has turned whispers into full-blown conversations, and the NCAA’s enforcement presence hasn’t exactly kept pace.
“There eventually needs to be guardrails on this thing,” Golesh continued. “I think we all want to know the rules in which you can operate in … the truth is, right now, there aren’t any, so you operate ethically with what you feel like is right.”
That’s the tightrope coaches are walking-balancing the pressure to win with the hope of doing things the right way, even when the rulebook feels more like a suggestion than a standard.
“Is it right to call a kid that’s on somebody else’s roster to go get them? It’s not,” Golesh said.
“I think in a lot of ways, what goes around comes around. I’m a strong believer in the football gods finding you at some point.
Generally, they’ll find you at the end of a game or on fourth-and-1.”
Golesh has wasted no time reshaping Auburn’s roster in his image. The Tigers’ 2026 transfer class ranks 13th nationally, according to 247Sports, with 39 signees-including 13 players who followed Golesh from USF.
The headliner? Quarterback Byrum Brown, who brings serious dual-threat credentials after throwing for over 3,100 yards and 28 touchdowns, while adding more than 1,000 rushing yards and 14 scores on the ground.
But Auburn’s gains came with losses, too. The Tigers saw a significant exodus of talent, including wide receivers Eric Singleton Jr.
(Florida), Cam Coleman (Texas), and Perry Thompson (Minnesota), as well as three quarterbacks. That kind of roster churn has become the norm in today’s college football, where the portal giveth and taketh away in equal measure.
The broader landscape isn’t lacking in drama either. Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney recently pulled back the curtain on alleged tampering involving Ole Miss and defensive coordinator Pete Golding, tied to conversations with offensive lineman Luke Ferrelli.
Meanwhile, Duke and former quarterback Darian Mensah reached a settlement after the school initially tried to block his transfer to Miami. And Washington’s Demond Williams made headlines after attempting to renege on a signed agreement with the Huskies in order to pursue other options.
These aren’t isolated incidents-they’re snapshots of a system under stress. The NCAA has taken some steps to tighten things up, including new rules introduced in October that shortened the transfer decision window to 15 days following a coaching change. But enforcement remains a major question mark, especially when third parties-family members, NIL reps, and unofficial agents-can reach out to programs without technically breaking any rules.
Golesh, for his part, isn’t pointing fingers. He’s focused on building something sustainable at Auburn, even if the current environment makes that tougher than ever.
“The pressure to win is great and people feel it in different ways,” he said. “I’m not here to judge anybody else’s decisions on how they operate, but you’d love to have some guardrails within the system. I think maybe as I establish myself within this conference, I’ll have more vocal opinions, but I’m just the new guy on the block trying to build a program here at Auburn and do it the right way.”
That might be easier said than done in a sport where the rules are still catching up to the reality on the ground. But Golesh sounds like a coach ready to take on the challenge-ethics, football gods, and all.