Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Earlier this month, college football held its first National Signing Day and both high school and college athletes all across the country saw their dreams come true signing with their college team of their choice.

Something that sometimes gets lost in the hoopla of high school seniors announcing their college destination and the craziness of the NCAA Transfer Portal, is the amount of junior college (JUCO) athletes that also meet their goals and dreams on signing day.

Every signing day, 100s of JUCO athletes advance upward to the Division I level, whether that’s at the FCS or FBS level. For practically the entirety of its Division I history, JUCO programs have been a steady pipeline for Troy University. Troy signed two JUCO players on signing day, with more coming in the February signing period.

Troy’s 2024 roster had 24 former JUCO players. The transfer portal has benefited far more programs than Troy, however. In 2023, nearly 20 players that were drafted in the NFL Draft played at the JUCO level at some point in their college careers.

According to the NJCAA, an average of 335 football players transfer to Division I programs every year. Almost that same amount end up transferring to Division II programs. Basketball and baseball have similar rates of JUCO athletes ending up at the college level. In fact, as of 2020, 33 percent of JUCO baseball players end up moving on to the Division I level.

As far as football goes, not only have countless JUCO players ended up moving to the Division I and NFL levels but many have even found their way into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Hall of Famers like Warren Moon, Larry Allen, Keyshawn Johnson, OJ Simpson, Walter Jones, Corey Dillon, Roger Staubach, Frank Gifford and Cam Newton went the JUCO route. Current NFL stars like Aaron Rodgers and Alvin Kamara also played at the JUCO level.

Despite these facts, many athletes still, to this day, look at the JUCO path as a punishment, or worse, a failure. I’ve heard athletes say that if they didn’t get a Division I offer out of high school it was a failure and they would rather move on with their lives than play at the JUCO level. The Netflix series “Last Chance U” shined a light on the positive impact that JUCO football can have on athletes but also shined a light on that mentality from some athletes I mentioned.

This is a mindset I’ve never understood but likely is a product of the importance the media – and especially social media – has put on “going DI.” A JUCO offer for an athlete means at the very least, they will get a chance to continue to play the sport they love and get a free Associate’s Degree. It also means their abilities will continue to be developed by some of the best coaches in the country. There is a reason so many JUCO athletes end up moving on to Division I and it starts with the coaches.

Many college football and NFL coaches get their starts at the JUCO level, much like athletes do. Many of those coaches also played at the JUCO level, as well. The same goes for other sports. At Troy, Chanda Rigby will likely end her coaching career as the Trojan’s all-time winningest women’s basketball coach. She’s also a Hall of Famer at the JUCO level after having coached there for more than a decade.

JUCO Athletics has certainly changed in the face of the transfer portal and NIL in college athletics. More former Division I athletes that would have transferred to the JUCO level, before moving on to another Division I program, are bypassing it and going straight to another Division I team. Each year less and less JUCO players are signing with FBS programs since the transfer portal was instituted, though 100s still move on to Division I.

That, however, gives more high school athletes the opportunity to earn a scholarships that maybe they might not have gotten in the past from the JUCO level. I’ve seen numerous articles and editorials asking the question of whether the transfer portal has killed JUCO athletics. The transfer portal has clearly hurt the JUCO route for athletes, every signing period that question is proven to be no and as long as thousands of athletes earn a chance at a free education to continue playing sports, junior colleges will always be a win.