Journey to the Center of the NCAA Transfer Portal
Welcome to the most mysterious place in college sports. It’s one of the most curious things in the NCAA’s orbit, and it seems to have a lot of grizzled coaches scared, partly because of a fear of the unknown and partly because it leaves them feeling as close to free agency as we’ve ever had in college sports.
It is The Transfer Portal, a new tool launched on Oct. 15, 2018, to identify college athletes who are seeking a transfer at a time when the NCAA has moved to give athletes more say in the process.
We’re about to take you inside. We have a guide. He’s an FBS recruiting coordinator who doesn’t get rattled.
Our journey to The Portal began at 11:45 a.m. PT on Friday.
Our guide begins by admitting he doesn’t go into the Portal on his computer as often as most of his colleagues do. Truth be told, the thing can be kinda maddening, he says. “You don’t get alerts when new players enter,” he says, “although you can sort it by conference, team or by the date they’ve entered into it.”
The biggest challenge with The Portal is sifting through it.
“Lots of these guys are walk-ons who never played,” says our guide. “You have FCS guys mixed in. You don’t know if he’s an All-American or he’s graduated and just put his name on here. There’s no filter. You don’t even know if they’re academically eligible. It’s interesting.”
No doubt there are some good players lumped in here. The big questions for coaches: Who are the actual good players and what are their reasons for leaving? Were they blocked on the depth chart? Were they bad news? Are they even eligible?
There is risk involved for players who submitted their names into The Portal. Once a kid puts his name in the transfer portal, their school can cancel their scholarship for the next term and does not have to hold their spot on the team. School compliance officers are the ones who enter names in The Portal within two days of an athlete expressing their desire to leave to their coach or an administrator. And as our guide says, hopefully, the kid is alerted to the possibility that if he’s on scholarship at that school, he might not be again.
“It’s a case where, if you’re gonna put your name out there, understand the coaches don’t have to renew you,” he says.
At the time of our visit to The Portal, there were 21 new player entries from Friday as of 12:06 p.m. PT. Among them: TCU punter Adam Nunez, who in 2016 was an honorable mention All-Big 12 player and made first-team Academic All-Big 12 in 2016 and 2017. He averaged 39.5 yards per punt this season while dealing with injuries for much of the year but did average 45 yards per punt in TCU’s Cheez-It Bowl thriller against Cal. Other names of interest included USC grad transfer safety Ykili Ross, a one-time top-75 recruit who played sparingly for the Trojans; quarterback Braxton Burmeister, another ex-four-star recruit who didn’t factor much into the picture at Oregon; Tramonda Moore, a massive former junior college offensive lineman who — some further surfing tells us — got booted from the Oklahoma team in November, and two walk-ons from the University of Utah.
There also was Anthony Frazier from Division II Fairmont State in West Virginia who is … well, a further search from the Fighting Falcons’ web site reveals he played in six games and made three tackles.
It takes some surfing and toggling to see which schools have a lot of players in The Portal. For instance, most teams in the Pac-12 have anywhere from three to six players in it. Arizona State has the most with 12, but you’d probably have to be a die-hard Sun Devil fan to recognize a few of their names. Linebacker Malik Lawal is probably the biggest, and he started three of the first five games of the season before getting overtaken by stud freshman Merlin Robertson and redshirt freshman Tyler Johnson. Lawal, a 6-1, 228-pound rising senior, finished the season with 21 tackles and 3.5 sacks.
Our guide says when it comes to a high-profile potential transfer — such as Alabama’s Jalen Hurts — coaches will be on the lookout for his name, ready to spring into action. Usually, though, there’s some recruiting staffer who pulls the list daily and then has another staffer tasked with going through it all to find out more about the names.
“So right now, there’s 571 players on here from D2,” he says. “We’ve got guys from Lake Erie College, Lock Haven of Pennsylvania, Seton Hall; I mean, Seton Hill. But then on the D1 side, and they list D1 as all of the FCS leagues, there’s over 1,000 kids on here, and this thing just updated. So now, Austin Kendall is on here.”
Even though there were reports from the Tulsa World that Kendall, an Oklahoma quarterback, had put his name in The Portal about an hour earlier, his name was a no-show until 2:06 p.m. CT. And there was another fresh addition who is sure to turn FBS coaches’ heads, Penn State wideout Juwan Johnson, an athletic 6-4, 225-pounder who has 81 career catches for more 1,000 yards.
“Hmmm, we might have to look into that one,” our guide says as he pauses our tour to surf the internet for more information about Johnson.
The third fresh name added is someone listed with an ACC program, but he’s not on the team’s roster and doesn’t appear to have any footprint digitally with that school’s football team.
Taking a further leap down this rabbit hole that is The Portal, I contacted the recruiting coordinator at that ACC program, who was initially stumped until I mentioned a few more details that came up on a Google search.
“Ohhh. He came to our camp,” the recruiting coordinator at the ACC program said. “He definitely was not on our team. He wasn’t even a walk-on. Maybe he just ended up being a student here and went to our compliance department and put himself in there.
“Bizarre. Very bizarre.”
As our guide says, welcome to the strange space that is The Transfer Portal.
Welcome to the most mysterious place in college sports. It’s one of the most curious things in the NCAA’s orbit, and it seems to have a lot of grizzled coaches scared, partly because of a fear of the unknown and partly because it leaves them feeling as close to free agency as we’ve ever had in college sports.
It is The Transfer Portal, a new tool launched on Oct. 15, 2018, to identify college athletes who are seeking a transfer at a time when the NCAA has moved to give athletes more say in the process.
We’re about to take you inside. We have a guide. He’s an FBS recruiting coordinator who doesn’t get rattled.
Our journey to The Portal began at 11:45 a.m. PT on Friday.
Our guide begins by admitting he doesn’t go into the Portal on his computer as often as most of his colleagues do. Truth be told, the thing can be kinda maddening, he says. “You don’t get alerts when new players enter,” he says, “although you can sort it by conference, team or by the date they’ve entered into it.”
The biggest challenge with The Portal is sifting through it.
“Lots of these guys are walk-ons who never played,” says our guide. “You have FCS guys mixed in. You don’t know if he’s an All-American or he’s graduated and just put his name on here. There’s no filter. You don’t even know if they’re academically eligible. It’s interesting.”
No doubt there are some good players lumped in here. The big questions for coaches: Who are the actual good players and what are their reasons for leaving? Were they blocked on the depth chart? Were they bad news? Are they even eligible?
There is risk involved for players who submitted their names into The Portal. Once a kid puts his name in the transfer portal, their school can cancel their scholarship for the next term and does not have to hold their spot on the team. School compliance officers are the ones who enter names in The Portal within two days of an athlete expressing their desire to leave to their coach or an administrator. And as our guide says, hopefully, the kid is alerted to the possibility that if he’s on scholarship at that school, he might not be again.
“It’s a case where, if you’re gonna put your name out there, understand the coaches don’t have to renew you,” he says.
At the time of our visit to The Portal, there were 21 new player entries from Friday as of 12:06 p.m. PT. Among them: TCU punter Adam Nunez, who in 2016 was an honorable mention All-Big 12 player and made first-team Academic All-Big 12 in 2016 and 2017. He averaged 39.5 yards per punt this season while dealing with injuries for much of the year but did average 45 yards per punt in TCU’s Cheez-It Bowl thriller against Cal. Other names of interest included USC grad transfer safety Ykili Ross, a one-time top-75 recruit who played sparingly for the Trojans; quarterback Braxton Burmeister, another ex-four-star recruit who didn’t factor much into the picture at Oregon; Tramonda Moore, a massive former junior college offensive lineman who — some further surfing tells us — got booted from the Oklahoma team in November, and two walk-ons from the University of Utah.
There also was Anthony Frazier from Division II Fairmont State in West Virginia who is … well, a further search from the Fighting Falcons’ web site reveals he played in six games and made three tackles.
It takes some surfing and toggling to see which schools have a lot of players in The Portal. For instance, most teams in the Pac-12 have anywhere from three to six players in it. Arizona State has the most with 12, but you’d probably have to be a die-hard Sun Devil fan to recognize a few of their names. Linebacker Malik Lawal is probably the biggest, and he started three of the first five games of the season before getting overtaken by stud freshman Merlin Robertson and redshirt freshman Tyler Johnson. Lawal, a 6-1, 228-pound rising senior, finished the season with 21 tackles and 3.5 sacks.
Our guide says when it comes to a high-profile potential transfer — such as Alabama’s Jalen Hurts — coaches will be on the lookout for his name, ready to spring into action. Usually, though, there’s some recruiting staffer who pulls the list daily and then has another staffer tasked with going through it all to find out more about the names.
“So right now, there’s 571 players on here from D2,” he says. “We’ve got guys from Lake Erie College, Lock Haven of Pennsylvania, Seton Hall; I mean, Seton Hill. But then on the D1 side, and they list D1 as all of the FCS leagues, there’s over 1,000 kids on here, and this thing just updated. So now, Austin Kendall is on here.”
Even though there were reports from the Tulsa World that Kendall, an Oklahoma quarterback, had put his name in The Portal about an hour earlier, his name was a no-show until 2:06 p.m. CT. And there was another fresh addition who is sure to turn FBS coaches’ heads, Penn State wideout Juwan Johnson, an athletic 6-4, 225-pounder who has 81 career catches for more 1,000 yards.
“Hmmm, we might have to look into that one,” our guide says as he pauses our tour to surf the internet for more information about Johnson.
The third fresh name added is someone listed with an ACC program, but he’s not on the team’s roster and doesn’t appear to have any footprint digitally with that school’s football team.
Taking a further leap down this rabbit hole that is The Portal, I contacted the recruiting coordinator at that ACC program, who was initially stumped until I mentioned a few more details that came up on a Google search.
“Ohhh. He came to our camp,” the recruiting coordinator at the ACC program said. “He definitely was not on our team. He wasn’t even a walk-on. Maybe he just ended up being a student here and went to our compliance department and put himself in there.
“Bizarre. Very bizarre.”
As our guide says, welcome to the strange space that is The Transfer Portal.
