Few things have changed college football more than the implementation of the transfer portal on Oct. 15, 2018.While the portal itself is merely a glorified spreadsheet, it's creation — and the many rule changes that have happened since — have created what is essentially college football's version of free agency.Thousands of players change schools each offseason as college football programs craft their roster construction strategies based on the portal. Some schools gobble up double-digit transfers each offseason while others, particularly on the Group of Five level, generally hope to avoid their roster from being raided.
So, what exactly is the portal? How does it work, and when does it open? 247Sports has the answers to all those questions and many more below.
What is the transfer portal?
The transfer portal is an NCAA database in which players who have opted to transfer are listed. Those with access to the portal include coaches, athletic administrators and compliance officials. The database can be sorted by year, division and sport, including football subcategories like FBS, FCS or just general football.
Players inform their compliance department when they’d like to enter the transfer portal. Typically, a player's name is listed in the database within 48 hours of the request. Players are not required to tell their coaching staffs of their intention to enter the portal.
Once a player is officially listed in the portal, schools are free to contact them without restriction. Communicating with a player before they enter the portal is a violation and is considered tampering.
Players never technically exit the transfer portal once they submit their name. If a player signs with a new school, they're listed as "matriculated" in the portal. If a player chooses to return to their previous school, they're listed as "withdrawn."
Are players forced to leave after entering the portal?
No. There are notable examples every cycle of a player entering the portal and ultimately choosing to return to their original school. It happened earlier this year when Liberty QB Kaidon Salter, the C-USA Offensive Player of the Year, withdrew from the portal just three days after officially entering.
If a player is good enough, schools are usually willing to let them explore their options and come back.
It doesn't work that way for everyone, however. Many players enter the transfer portal and don't garner the interest they expect. But once a player enters the portal, there's no requirement for their school to keep them on the roster past the current semester.
Thus, you end up with many players stuck in transfer portal purgatory,a phenomenon 247Sports explored in 2021. That cycle there were 826 FBS scholarship players in the 247Sports portal database. Only 37.8% of them stayed on the FBS level for the following season.
Which rule changes have impacted the transfer portal?
The transfer portal began as more of a curiosity than a game-changer back in October 2018. At that point, the NCAA rules landscape was still highly restrictive for transfers.
Conferences had rules limiting players from transferring within their leagues. Underclassmen couldn't transfer without sitting out a year in residence penalty — an NCAA rule that dictates a non-graduate transfer wasn't eligible to play in their first season following a transfer. Name, image and likeness also had yet to be introduced. But the rules have changed rapidly over the years.
Here are some rules that represent the biggest shifts in the transfer portal:
April 28, 2021:All NCAA players given one-time transfer exemption
This is the rule change that altered everything. Whereas once the only players who could transfer freely were grad transfers, in April 2021 the NCAA voted to allow athletes in all sports to transfer once without sitting out a year of eligibility. This immediately led to a huge spike in the number of football transfers. There were 1,692 FBS players who entered the portal in the 2019-20 cycle. That number nearly doubled two years later to 3,083 during the 2021-22 cycle. This past cycle, that number jumped to 3,252 and the 2023-24 cycle is again on pace to set a record.
June 4, 2021: SEC eliminates intraconference transfer rule
The SEC was the last conference to eliminate its intraconference transfer restrictions in June 2021, paving the way for any transfer to stay within the league if they so choose. For a long time, even for graduate transfers, there were intraconference transfer restrictions. Coaches could even restrict a player from transferring to a school on their future schedule.
Perhaps the most infamous example of this came in 2017 when Kansas State receiver Corey Sutton requested a transfer release from the program, providing the Wildcats a list of 35 schools he'd like to transfer to. Kansas State blocked him from transferring to all 35.
That's the landscape that transfers previously had to navigate just eight years ago. The tide has turned considerably in a short amount of time.
Note: The SEC still does have somewhat of an intraconference transfer restriction. Any SEC player hoping to transfer within the league must do so by the end of the winter transfer portal window.
Aug. 31, 2022: NCAA introduces transfer windows
The transfer portal's initial iterations never closed. Players were free to enter the portal at any time. That shifted in 2022 when the NCAA introduced transfer windows for each sport. At the start, fall sports had a 45-day winter window and a 15-day spring window. That's since shifted to a 30-day fall window.
Dec. 22, 2023: Multi-time transfers cleared to play in 2024
Changes to the transfer system aren’t just coming from the NCAA, they're coming from the courts. The NCAA is locked up in multiple legal battles, one of which is occurring in West Virginia where a judge granted a temporary restraining order against the NCAA from enforcing its rules about second-time undergraduate transfers, who were required to sit a year in residence.
With the judge issuing that ruling, the NCAA later sent out a memo that all transfers during the 2023-24 academic calendar year are eligible to play immediately, even if they’ve already transferred once as an undergraduate.
Thus, we enter a spring transfer window where every player, whether they're transferred before or not, will be eligible for the 2024 season.
When can players enter the transfer portal?
There are two transfer windows for football players, in the winter and in the spring. The winter window ran from Dec. 4 to Jan. 2. The spring window will open April 16 and close April 30.The design here is one window follows the regular season and one window follows spring practice.
There are other circ*mstances that allow a player to enter the portal outside that window. Graduate transfers can enter the portal whenever they'd like without restriction. The NCAA also grants a 30-day immediate portal window for players whose head coach leaves the program. So if a head coach steps down in June, a transfer window immediately triggers.
The winter transfer window is also a bit fluid. The deadline is Jan. 2 but athletes who participate in a bowl game or a postseason game are given a five-day buffer from when the regular season ends.
When the transfer portal window opens varies by sport. For men's and women's basketball, it will open March 18, the day of Selection Sunday and the last day for all conference tournaments, and close on May 1. The baseball window opens June 3 and runs through July 2.
What impact have transfers had on college football?
Transfersare annually some of the best players in the sport.
Five of the past seven Heisman Trophy winners were transfers. Among the first and second-team all-conference selections in the FBS this year, 28.5% of them transferred at least once in their careers. The 2023 NFL Draft saw a record-setting group of former transfers drafted, too, with 52 such players, including five first rounders, being selected last year. There were 37 former transfers drafted in 2022.
