When the transfer portal came into existence, plenty of people feared that it would turn the Group of 5 and FCS into a de facto minor league for the Power 4. Years into the system now, those people were largely correct. The coaches at those levels had two choices: to complain about their new reality and find themselves out of a job, or embrace it.
Nevada head coach Jeff Choate is in the second group.
Choate knows there are precious few talented football players who dream of beginning and ending their college football careers at the University of Nevada at Reno. And so the challenge for him and his staff is to find the right players at the right time in their development cycle: talented high schoolers who are not yet physically developed enough to compete in the power conferences, or Power 4 players with NFL traits who were not refined enough as football players to see the field at their current school…