West Virginia University men’s basketball transfer Jose Perez faces off with his nephew prior to a game last season.

MORGANTOWN — Let’s begin today by agreeing to restrain from being disagreeable on the subject of the college athletics transfer portal.

Taken by itself, it was an idea whose time had come in an area where athletes had been restrained from having the kind of freedom of movement from school to school that would allow for necessary adjustments in their collegiate careers. Be it from originally selecting the wrong school or the wrong coach, from being caught in a situation where they weren’t getting enough playing time, from being too far from home or too close to home, from being on a staff that had been fired or taken a new job or simply, as hard as it is to believe, to get into an academic environment that better served their needs as they grew and matured.

Unfortunately, nothing exists in such a vacuum.

What started out as something with moral and ethical value was forced to be part of a season poisoned by the greed that comes with money.

Now money alone is not an evil … especially if you have it and use it wisely.

But it comes with agents and with advisors and donors and boosters and coaches whose worth was judged not on how they brought their athletes along through a college career but on a won-lost record that was aimed at creating crowds, donations, ratings, merchandise sales … all of it hidden behind wallpaper purporting to be an extension of the old “rah-rah, win one for the Gipper” college game that long ago had become extinct everywhere but on the television stations still showing movies featuring Ronald Reagan as George Gipp.

It combined with NIL money – payments to players from “outside sources” – that was devised to allow college athletes to be paid for their name, image and likeness after a century of having others benefit from it. That money pool (you can read that cesspool, if you must) devoured such heretofore morally strong and highly ethical values as loyalty and brotherhood.

The new system was different from the old system, but hardly an improvement in any area. Again, transferring wasn’t the problem. That had been there, restricted as it was by having a mandatory year to sit out or preventing a player from transferring within his own conference, and it could have been improved without reconstructing it as part of the professional model.

This, of course, brings us to the situation in which West Virginia’s basketball program finds itself today … with only eight scholarship players currently on its roster and with its portal having become a revolving door that has brought in players to fill holes but unable to keep up with those leaving to create new holes.

It all grew out of an unfortunate month in which Bob Huggins, the Hall of Fame coach, imploded and was forced to resign, highlighting that the loyalty in the locker room was far more to Huggins himself than to the school for whom he worked.

Out of the rubble that is currently trying to be cleared away to make a pathway into a new era by a fledgling interim coach, Josh Eilert, a poster child for the entire transitional era in which we find ourselves has been born in Jose Perez.

The new system had seemed to be built for Perez. He was a gifted athlete, a hard worker and a good student who got caught up in forces that worked against him.

On Wednesday, Perez announced he was entering the transfer portal with the intention of seeking his fifth school in six years. He also said he was leaving the door open to return to WVU, which is another way of saying he will give them the chance to match or top whatever NIL money he may be offered.

And he will get offers. Within hours there were reports that Michigan was hot on his trail and that others would quickly join in.

Perez’s trail led him to Gardner-Webb, to Marquette, to Manhattan and then, eight months ago, to West Virginia.

He actually was satisfied being back home in New York when, eight months ago, his coach at Manhattan, Steve Masiello was fired prior to the season.

Huggins came in and drew him to WVU, but there was a catch. He had already used his waiver from sitting out, so he needed to get another waiver because of the circumstance of his coach having been fired just before the season.

The NCAA dragged its feet on this as he sat out the first semester before they came down with a decision that the waiver would be denied. He would have to sit out the entire year but have a full year’s eligibility – his last – this upcoming year.

Many believe if he had been allowed the waiver last year, WVU might have been a national contender, and they certainly felt, before the Huggins incident, that he would make this year’s team special with its additions and holdovers.

But didn’t he lose his coach again? The Huggins incidents occurred, Perez maintained he was going nowhere, but right after Eilert was named coach and players began leaving, his situation had changed and he entered the portal.

How screwed up can things get before the NCAA sits down and rewrites all its rules concerning transfers and recruiting and NIL to bring sanity back into a game that captivates the nation each winter and certainly each March?

Perez spent the year at WVU, never got to play, never caused a problem, and now he’s on the move again. WVU’s roster is torn apart, and there’s no sign of the end to the madness in sight.