CHARLOTTE — Baylor head coach Dave Aranda is saying the quiet part out loud.
Alongside Division III Howard Payne coach Coby Gipson and HBCU Prairie View A&M coach Tremaine Jackson, Aranda shared how uncomfortable he is with the present mechanisms in place for procuring college football talent.
With a microphone held in both hands and using his authorative velvet hammer of a voice at the Charlotte Convention Center, Aranda answered questions in front of nearly 150 coaches looking for answers about how to recruit high school players and players out of the transfer portal at the same time.
“High school recruiting, for us, it’s a two-year thing,” Aranda told his colleagues at the 2026 American Football Coaches Convention on Monday. “You get to know their families. They’re [coaches] in their homes. They’re at their games, in summer camps and spring football visits. They gain so much more of an understanding of what people are about, where they’re coming from, what’s in their hearts in high school recruiting.
“In transfer portal recruiting, as much as you do your homework, there are people that committed to a school, that got a call the day before they’re at another school, canceled the flight, took a flight to visit your school as well, to come in to you. It’s just crazy business, that’s how it is.”
(Photo by David Buono/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Former Florida quarterback DJ Lagway committed to transfer to Baylor on Jan. 8. He has yet to officially sign — as of Friday, Jan. 16 — and has continued to take visits to other schools despite his verbal commitment to play for Aranda.
Aranda says this is why recruiting out of high school is still so important, even at the Power 4 level. Younger unproven players cost less, sure, but programs stand a chance of retention if coaches have formed a strong bond with those players they’ve developed out of high school into starters. That’s not true of transfers.
“Transfer portal-wise, we can have the money to get a team for one year,” Aranda said. “You try, you hope, it’s their contract year. If they have their contract year, then that’s the next year. We don’t have the money to hold on to them because they’re getting twice as much as we’re working.”
Aranda lays out the financial obstacles faced by teams Baylor might compete against. Trying to retain a roster year-to-year at all levels is difficult.
“So the money that was being spent a year ago, [$200,000] a year ago, is [$400,000] now for the same production, same stuff,” the Baylor coach continued. “So the money is just going up, and there’s people that pay it, and so then you see the effects of it, the lower you go.”
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As Gipson and Jackson sandwiched themselves between Aranda, who was laying out just how difficult it is to build a roster and retain it, they nodded their heads in agreement.
Gipson keeps his conversations with recruits, especially high school players, as ugly truthful as he can.
“Brutal transparency with recruits,” Gipson said. “When we recruit, I tell them, ‘When you were 12 years old, and you went to bed at night dreaming about playing college football, I know you did not dream about Howard Payne University.’
“And then I bring my wife in, which is probably dangerous.”
Gipson is married to Dr. Christy Gipson, an All-American softball player at East Texas Baptist. She earned a PhD in nursing at the University of Texas-Tyler, and she has completed a full marathon.
By Gipson’s own admission, he is just a football coach with a master’s degree from Concordia University Irvine, only fit enough to run a half-marathon and considered it a privilege to just pitch on the collegiate baseball team at LeTourneau.
“See where we’re going with this, right?” Gipson asked. “What’s her best quality? She likes me. That’s her best quality because none of that other stuff matters. Well, there’s a school that likes you. There’s a school that wants you to be part of it.”
Upon Gipson passing him the microphone, Jackson doesn’t even front like his conversations with potential Panthers are negotiations. They ain’t. He ain’t your buddy, your homie, your partner, daddy, and he damn sure doesn’t want to speak with your agent.
His players — even the ones that played in the Celebration Bowl, HBCU football’s national championship game, this year — are on one-year contracts.
As a member of Omega Psi Phi, Incorporated, he says he doesn’t need your friendship either.
“We live in a time,” Jackson says, “where we’re so concerned about being friends with these kids. I joined a fraternity, so I don’t need any more friends. I got guaranteed friends everywhere.
“I don’t need a kid’s friendship. I need to be able to tell them the truth, to help change his life. And so the transformation happens with us.”
Soft nods and whispers of “Amen” follow Jackson’s words.
Coaches in the audience, a semicircle that gets larger at each glance, don’t wait for a microphone before asking their questions. They shout them from their seats. They lean in to hear each question’s answer.
Some scribble those answers with the ferocity of men who sacrificed everything just to coach ball.
They know the game is the same. It’s the business of ball has changed.
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While there is a fair amount of complaining amongst the many coaches I shook hands with, I watched a quiet resilience build while walking three levels of a packed convention center brimming with men who are maniacal about a route breaking off at eight yards, not 10, about how the low-man wins in a tackle and about how preparation is directly proportional to output in performance.
If recruiting this way — agents, rampant transfers and name, image and likeness — is what it takes, in the lawless land of college football in 2026, some of them will.
Out-recruit, out-work, out-last those who will decide this kind of coaching ain’t what they signed up for and get a regular job.
Aranda is uncomfortable, but that’s the point. Get comfortable being uncomfortable, bothered, irritated, annoyed — even angry. It’s a tree-shaking time among the ranks of college football coaches, and dead leaves get dropped.
Let’s see who falls off.
RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports. Follow him @RJ_Young.
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