The NCAA Transfer Portal is a new tool that was released Oct. 2018 by the NCAA to help college athletes transfer schools.
“The Transfer Portal is a compliance tool designed to foster transparency in the transfer process and to empower student-athletes to make known their interest in transferring to another school,” per the NCAA’s website.
It’s not as useful as it sounds. If you’re not a future NFL prospect or NBA prospect, the portal is a black hole. Let’s start with some statics before I go into my personal experience as an athlete.
Exactly 20,911 Division I student-athletes entered the portal in 2022. That’s 13% of all Division student athletes. Out of those who entered the portal, only 7% found a new NCAA school. Division II saw around 10,000 athletes enter the portal in 2022. That means over 31,000 athletes were in the portal at one time. For all the athletes in the portal, 30% have enrolled into a new NCAA school, and the other 70% are still in the portal or could never find a new home. Now you can start to see why I’ve called it a black hole.
After my sophomore soccer season here at Union, I entered the portal. The portal itself is just a list of names, with no real information about the athlete. Just two days after entering the portal, I was at the bottom of page two and was already forgotten about. All over sports news, you see these big name football players find new schools and get huge NIL deals. That’s true for maybe a hundred athletes. The other thousands are left sinking, floundering in the black hole. Every day I had to send more and more emails out to coaches just to get a call set up — and good luck having your ideal school email you back. I emailed every Florida school, because that was my ideal location, and didn’t hear back from a single person. I was now stuck in a black hole I didn’t even know I was entering.
Another misconception is that the school you’re transferring from will take you back. That is completely wrong — most of the time, there is no chance you can come back and play there if all goes south in the portal. That means you must find a school or you’re no longer playing the sport you love anymore ever again. Most athletes enter the portal to step up a level, which again is a rare occurrence. I think after a few weeks in the portal your goals on where to go to school change.
After spending time in the portal, I realized there’s no definite definition of a successful or unsuccessful transfer. Being in the portal is stressful enough in itself, much less worrying about looking successful to other people. I say all this because at the end of my transfer process, I had several options. Some were huge steps up in soccer, but instead I chose an okay team with more options for me outside of my sport.
I’m not alone in this experience. Cillian Heaney is a sophomore business major who transferred to Union from a Division I school. Even though it’s technically a step down in soccer terms, it wasn’t an unsuccessful transfer. He had other options to play other places, but chose Union for other reasons than just soccer. I think many people forget that student athletes are more than just athletes.
“I lost my confidence playing at [my old school], and not because it was Division I, but because the coach hated me,” Heaney said. “The falling out with the coach made me realize I needed more than just a good soccer team to make me happy, so I choose Union to reset my mind and my game.”
The portal doesn’t just affect the athletes playing college sports, but also the college programs themselves are completely changing. Instead of coaches recruiting players to play for four years and building a program around it, every season is a different team. Instead of building a program that will be successful in the future, a coach is expected to build a team to win that same year. Coaches must expect at least 20% of their team to change through the portal every year. On top of that, getting recruited as a senior in high school to play Division I or high Division II is becoming harder and harder because of the portal. If I’m a coach, why would I choose an unproven senior in high school over a college junior who has already played two years of college soccer and started all the games? Obviously, the junior is going to help a coach win games that year, unlike the freshman who needs to learn for his first year.
Sports are changing and it’s important to understand the portal as a black hole. Some may survive and come out at a better school, but many will never see the greener grass they’re looking for. College sports is a business — and each athlete is just a number in the portal, looking for somebody to take them in.