Teams already adapting to new transfer rules that started this week
Plan allows players to transfer once without missing season.
There appears to be an uptick this year in athletes putting their names in the NCAA transfer portal, a database created in 2017 to provide more transparency in the process.
As spring practice winds down, Arkansas coach Sam Pittman sees some potential holes in his roster.
Arkansas didn’t use the maximum 25 scholarships this year on its incoming recruits so it has a few left over to hit the transfer market, where there is no longer any question about whether athletes who switch schools will be immediately eligible to compete.
“We might take a tight end,“Pittman said. “The bottom line is whomever we took would have to be a D-lineman or someone with the ball in his hands. I don’t think we’d take an offensive lineman in the portal right now.”
The NCAA made it official Thursday, announcing the Division I Council had voted to approve a plan that will allow all college athletes to transfer one time as an undergraduate without having to sit out a season.
The so-called one-time exception that has been available to athletes in most college sports for years will now also be available to football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s ice hockey and baseball players who transfer from one Division I school to another.
It’s a big change, a long time coming and it has some in college sports, especially football, worried about the potential for unintended consequences: Fewer scholarships available to high school recruits. Power programs poaching players from small schools. Rosters turning over quicker than coaches can keep up.
While those are all real concerns, it has been apparent for several years this was coming and coaches have already been operating in this new reality of increased player freedom.
There appears to be an uptick this year in athletes putting their names in the NCAA transfer portal, a database created in 2017 to provide more transparency in the process.
Combine the number of transfers with the NCAA’s decision to give athletes in all sports a free year of eligibility because of the pandemic and there is little doubt that there will be more scholarship-worthy major college football players than available scholarships over the next few seasons.
The NCAA’s new transfer rules will require players in fall and winter sports to notify their current schools they intend to leave by May 1; spring sport athletes must do so by July 1, starting in 2022.