Roster tampering might be happening at South Carolina and in the SEC. What can be done?

Let’s backtrack. Think to last year. South Carolina, fresh off its Duke’s Mayo Bowl win over North Carolina, was riding high. Quarterback-turned-receiver-turned bowl hero Dakereon Joyner became a sensation overnight.

That attracted its share of attention.

“After he performed like he did in the (Duke’s Mayo Bowl) — schools aren’t supposed to be reaching out to to him — but he had everybody asking him to be the quarterback of their team,” head coach Shane Beamer said at a Gamecock Club event in Anderson in May 2022. “And he chose to stay at Carolina.”

No, there wasn’t an investigation into contact with Joyner (at least not publicly). No, Beamer didn’t call out any specific school. And no, the NCAA didn’t invoke some sweeping legislation that pulverized those allegedly involved to dissuade others from conducting themselves in similar fashion.

Welcome to the world of college football tampering: an environment chock full of talk, rumors, complaints and very little actual punishment.

“There’s no doubt tampering is real,” Florida head coach Billy Napier said on Tuesday at the SEC’s spring meetings. “... And I think that until there’s something done about it, you’ll continue to see it.”

The college sports landscape has flipped on its head in the two years since Beamer was hired in Columbia. The one-time transfer exception passed in 2021 and the legalization of players’ benefiting monetarily off their names, images and likenesses has created a climate with roughly as much law and order as Tombstone, Arizona, circa 1880.

What this has led to in practice is coaches having to re-recruit their rosters year-to-year, while fending off other programs trying to poach star players through third-party avenues (high school coaches, trainers, etc.).

Yeah, it’s chaos. And no one is happy about it.

Take South Carolina, for instance. The Gamecocks saw running back MarShawn Lloyd (Southern Cal), tight end Jaheim Bell (Florida State) and defensive ends Gilber Edmond (Florida State) and Jordan Burch (Oregon) leave the program after starring roles during the 2022 campaign.

Was there foul play afoot? Well ...

“I mean, we lost four guys that were key contributors for us after the season, and it was strange on a couple of those situations based on conversations that I’d had with guys two or three days before they went in the portal,” Beamer said, seemingly only half-joking. “It’s interesting how things happen. But, again, rumors are one thing, proof’s another thing. And as far as our situations, I haven’t had anything where I’ve necessarily turned anybody in for tampering.”

What Beamer suggested — albeit with some tongue-in-cheek — boils down to the crux of why tampering has simply become part of the college football ecosystem.

Third-party communication and back-channeling has existed in most every era of college football (Google the SMU 1987 death penalty case if you’d like to suggest otherwise). That, however, has been exacerbated by players’ ability to move more freely.

The issue in this day and age, though, is in enforcement. The NCAA has become increasingly less concerned with punishing schools for malfeasance — particularly in relation to NIL issues — as it struggles to fight to maintain the existence of the amateur model it was built to govern.

Combine that with coaches not wanting to tell on each other and proof being difficult to come by, and there’s ample skepticism as to what can actually be done to curb tampering.

“I think tampering’s been going on for a long time,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said. “It’s probably more prevalent because it’s so much more easy to transition from one school to another by way of the portal. So look, if kids are exploring to leave, it’s really hard to police. Ask the NCAA.”

So what is the solution? Beamer’s low-key jabs are one more comical solution. At the very least, we can laugh at those suggestions. More likely, though, it falls on coaches actually turning one another in. But that in and of itself has been largely avoided.

Pittsburgh’s Pat Narduzzi came maybe the closest to naming names last summer amid star receiver Jordan Addison’s transfer to Southern Cal. But, at least publicly, no school has been punished for tampering.

“If people are found guilty of tampering, you’ve got to hammer them from a violation standpoint and that’ll cut it out pretty quickly,” Beamer told The State. “... When somebody is found guilty the penalties need to be severe. But if schools or coaches feel like there’s no penalties and nobody’s gonna do anything then guys just continue to do it as well.”

Tampering may be happening in the shadows. But based on the feelings of those gauged in Destin, it’s become a seemingly accepted way of life. Perhaps jabs at booster events are, in fact, the best way forward.