Chaos, lovely chaos

 A-portaling we will go ... a-portaling we will go ... heigh ho the dair-

Oops, sorry. Just trying to get with the zeitgeist here.

Just trying to sync up, to circle back, to embrace the culture, as the corporatists say. (Is that what they say?). In other words, I'm trying to become comfortable with utter chaos, which is what the transfer portal has brought to big-time college athletics now that every kid in America is shopping around for the mythic Better Situation -- or at least for enough NIL jack to buy himself that Maserati the well-heeled alums used to buy for him back in the olden days.

What's that?

Yes, I do carry on sometimes. And, yes, I do have a healthy complement of that old-man cynicism.

But it's hard not to be cynical when you look up and see that somewhere around 3,700 "student-athletes" entered the transfer portal Friday when it opened for business. Thirty-seven hundred. That's a lot of kids looking for somewhere else to land, and a lot of high-dollar programs carnival-barking to get them to land at dear old State U.

Quarterbacks? You say you're looking for a quarterback?

Well, step right up, because here are just a few who either entered the portal Friday or are expected to: Josh Hoover from TCU, Sam Leavitt from Arizona State, Dylan Raiola from Nebraska, DJ Lagway from Florida. Oh, and the big prize in this deal: Brendan Sorsby from Cincinnati.

Sorsby did not play in Cincinnati's 35-13 loss to Navy in the Liberty Bowl Friday night, having already decided to bail on the Bearcats after playing the last two seasons for them. Indiana fans might remember him from his time with the Hoosiers, for whom he played two seasons before bailing on them to go to Cincinnati.

Now he's on the market again, with 7,208 career passing yards and 82 touchdowns in tow. And let you think the Blob is picking on him, it should be noted he's no more itinerant than Raiola (who originally committed to Georgia, flipped to Nebraska, and now is flipping somewhere else after two seasons) or Leavitt (who played one season at Michigan State, portal-ed to Arizona State, and now is portal-ing somewhere else after two seasons).

It's a landscape of vagabonds now, in other words. Have endorsement dough, will travel. Need a QB who can throw a football over those mountains? Uncle Rico is yours for a song and a fat check from Subway, State Farm or Murray's Mercantile in downtown Hog Wallow.

And, listen, I'm not blaming the kids. For years, they were walking billboards for their schools' apparel deals and got zippo for it -- at least above the table. If they're now commanding serious NIL money instead of the fabled Thousand-Dollar Handshake, more power to them.

And the portal chaos that's resulted?

Not the kids' fault, either. They're just playing by the non-rules the NCAA unleashed by instituting all this without a plan. So that's on Charlie Baker and the gang.

Still, it is a strange new world. it is indeed.

 In the wake of Indiana's 38-3 paving of Alabama in the Rose Bowl, for instance, 'Bama predictably pissed and moaned and made all manner of hilarious excuses. None was more hilarious, or more revealing of what chaos has wrought, than this: One of the internet whiners complained that of course Indiana won, because the Hoosiers had a surfeit of fourth- and fifth-year juniors and seniors, 23- and 24-year-olds with a lot more experience and maturity. 

Which is to say, Indiana was exactly what good college football teams used to look like before all the portal-ing began. Go figure.

Or, you know, sync up, circle back, embrace the culture, as the case may be.