Former Alabama tackle Kadyn Proctor raised some eyebrows following his transfer to Iowa when he commended the Iowa staff on keeping in touch with and encouraging him throughout his freshman year at Alabama.

Proctor, a Des Moines native, explained his decision: “It was so easy for me to pick them when I did enter the transfer portal. Because we still had those relationships. Even after I was doing bad in the SEC and struggling, they hit me up and said, ‘We’re proud of you. You’re gonna get through this.’ And that’s what ultimately helped me with my decision because they still believed in me.”

What sounded like clear-cut tampering to some throughout the college football world, however, sounds like something else entirely to former Alabama quarterback and current college football pundit Greg McElroy.

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“A lot of people are all bent out of shape about the tampering,” McElroy said, per Athlon Sports. “Y’all — it’s about relationships. It’s all about relationships. Iowa stayed in touch with Kadyn Proctor, maybe he was a little homesick. He’s now going to go home.”

Tampering has been a talking point among coaches for as long as the transfer portal has been effective in college football. What Alabama fans are wondering is: When do relationships become transactional with regards to players like Proctor?

What is tampering?

In a Powerpoint posted by the NCAA entitled “Transfers, Tampering, and Trends,” the body lays out the distinction between impermissible contact and tampering.

All tampering is a case of impermissible contact — but not all impermissible contact rises to tampering. The slide reads:

“Pursuant to Bylaw 13.1.1.3, any communication with an enrolled student-athlete is impermissible. Although communication is impermissible, not every instance rises to the level of tampering.”

Some of the “factors to consider” according to the Powerpoint include:

• Results (did the student transfer)
• Pre-existing relationship (former coaches talking to students)
• Timing of events (when did the student transfer and how did initial contact happen?)

The transfer portal is still, for all intents and purposes, a nascent being in the world of college sports, so the rules are still being ironed out. But there are those who believe if Iowa was reaching out to Proctor, even if it was to encourage him, then there were ulterior motives to doing so.