There hasn’t been a more successful program-builder in college football this century — or perhaps ever — than Nick Saban, the recently retired coach who guided Alabama to six national championships in his 17-year tenure at the school.

In Saban’s eyes, one of the go-to roster construction methods in modern college football has some potential perils.

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During a discussion Saturday morning on ESPN’s “College GameDay” about the struggles Florida State and Florida are enduring this year, Saban addressed some of the concerns with a program leaning so heavily on the transfer portal.

“People are in the portal for a reason,” he said. “If you take them out, you better make sure they’re in there for the right reason.”

Though Saban wasn’t speaking specifically about Florida State or lambasting any of the players coach Mike Norvell brought aboard to a team that’s off to a disappointing 0-3 start, his assessment of portal recruiting touched on an increasingly common sentiment in the sport — that is: It can be extremely volatile and fail to produce the consistent, year-to-year success programs aim to achieve.

A 2023 Seminoles team that had a 13-0 regular season and won the ACC for the first time in nine years featured transfers at several key positions, a group that included defensive end Jared Verse, wide receiver Keon Coleman, defensive tackle Braden Fiske and quarterback Jordan Travis (though Travis was at Florida State for five of his six college seasons). Of the 10 Florida State players who were selected in the 2024 NFL Draft, nine began their college careers elsewhere.

That recipe hasn’t been as fruitful in 2024. After entering the season No. 10 in the US LBM Coaches Poll, the Seminoles have lost each of their first three games. Two of those losses came in ACC play, likely knocking them out of conference title contention before the end of September. Several of Florida State’s transfers have struggled, namely quarterback DJ Uiagalelei, who is completing just 56.6% of his passes with one touchdown to two interceptions.

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For all of the early season stumbles, Florida State has an effective pitch to potential transfers, between the program’s storied history and its recent track record in getting transfers into starring roles and, eventually, the NFL.

As Saban noted, it’s just a matter of finding the right players out of the portal.

“You’ve got to have a vision for ‘How are we going to create value for players?’ That’s what you have to have,” he said. “If you’re going to have a successful program, you have to create value for players. Why would a guy come to your school if he’s not going to be a better person, he’s not going to have a better chance to be successful in life or he’s not going to have a chance to play in the NFL because you’re going to develop him? How are you going to create that value? That should be the vision every program has and that will fix these two programs (Florida State and Florida) if they go to that vision.”

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Nick Saban says players are 'in the portal for a reason' when discussing FSU's woes