Transfer portal madness is back, and it's started with a bang

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney and the Tigers will have to navigate the transfer portal once again.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Mon Dec 04 15:16:14 GMT-04:00 2023

Transfer portal madness is here. It’s been here, for sure, but now it gets ramped up even further.

College football coaches across the country are out on the road recruiting the next wave of high school prospects, starting to plan for next year’s class, thinking about bowl preparation, and wondering if they will hang on to certain assistant coaches.

With the transfer portal, it adds another burden as coaches scramble to see what players are leaving their program, what holes they must fill, and begin the process of finding out which portal players can help their program.

A little after noon Monday, almost 400 players had entered their names into the transfer portal. That includes Clemson wide receiver Beaux Collins and cornerback Toriano Pride (which we knew about last week) and running back Domonique Thomas.

Some notable names in the portal early? Oklahoma quarterback Dillon Gabriel, Ohio State quarterback Kyle McCord, Ohio St. wide receiver Julian Fleming, Texas A&M defensive lineman Walter Nolen, Washington State quarterback Cameron Ward, Arizona St. quarterback Drew Pyne (who helped Notre Dame beat Clemson in 2022, then transferred out), UCLA quarterback Dante Moore, Oregon St. quarterback (and former Clemson signal-caller) DJ Uiagalelei, Duke quarterback Riley Leonard (who is expected to wind up at Notre Dame, after the Irish took former Wake quarterback Sam Hartman last year), and Coastal Carolina quarterback Grayson McCall.

And if you’re Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea, you have to wonder what kind of roster you’ll have next season because he’s already had 15 players enter the portal. That includes a wide receiver with South Carolina ties – Jayden McGowan out of Laurens.

New Indiana head coach Frank Cignetti has seen 20 players hit the portal, while UTEP has lost 18.

A year ago, 456 scholarship players appeared in the portal on Day 1, and a record 780 total players from FBS, FCS and Division II went in during the first year of the NCAA’s transfer window system.

That window is a bit shorter this season - reduced from 60 days out of the year down to 45. The 30-day winter transfer period runs from Monday through Jan. 2. However, the recruiting dead period starting on Dec. 18 makes this a two-week race to get transfers on campus and committed as fast as possible.

Clemson has one offer out – to Division II offensive lineman Alan Herron of Shorter.

How does the portal work?

The NCAA's transfer portal opened on Oct. 15, 2018, but it took on a bigger role in 2021. That's when the NCAA allowed a one-time transfer without a one-year penalty in sports where it wasn't already permitted: football, men's and women's basketball, baseball and men's hockey.

Athletes who have decided to transfer don't put their names into the portal. They have to submit a notification of transfer to a compliance administrator at their current school, who then has two business days to enter the information into the portal.

The portal is a password-protected NCAA database accessed through a web browser. The process of entering a player includes inputting their name, NCAA ID number, email address, phone number, sport or sports, and answering a list of questions. Among those questions are whether the athlete wants to be contacted by other schools, whether they're transferring as a graduate student, and whether they're receiving an athletic scholarship.

Athletes receive an automated email when their information has been entered into the portal. The original school later submits an academic and athletic history for athletes.

How does it work for coaches?

The portal isn't publicly accessible; rather, coaches and administrators have logins. Coaches usually have view-only access to the information, which they can filter by any of the database fields entered and export the information.

Players are listed as "active" until they choose to withdraw from the portal, or they start with a new school. The new school isn't supposed to update players' portal status to "matriculated" until after they start the first day of classes for the regular academic year after transferring.