Athletics Veritas is a weekly series aimed at helping higher education executives, faculty, and other stakeholders stay tuned in on trending national issues impacting college athletics, especially NCAA Division I. Athletics Veritas is created by senior DI athletic administrators around the nation.
Tinker, Tailor, Transfer Portal, Spy
Executive Summary
The NCAA transfer portal was implemented in Fall 2018 to streamline how student-athletes could notify other member institutions of their potential interest in transferring.
Student-athletes’ decision to put their names in transfer portal comes with risk, including losing athletics scholarships at their current institution.
NCAA infraction consequences elevated to Level II (second most severe infraction level) for coaches tampering with student-athletes at other institutions whose names are not in the transfer portal.
Four-year to four-year transfer data in focus (with full graphic).
NCAA membership watching for potential future correlation between the advent of the transfer portal and single-sport transfer data trends.
One of the most talked about issues in college sports, especially in Division I, over the past year has been the transfer portal, which went live on October 15, 2018. And during the past several weeks back to your institution’s winter break and even the weeks preceding it -- is a time where a subset of student-athletes, particularly those participating in fall sports with recently completed championship seasons, are mulling a transfer.
The transfer portal is functionally the online, membership-accessible database for Division I student-athletes to submit their names and indicate to coaches across the country that they are interested in transferring to another institution. In other words, a national student-athlete transfer ground zero.
The transfer portal also serves as an informational hub for institutions to track transfers from a compliance and roster management standpoint, including the exchange of “transfer tracers.” Transfer tracers are generally one-page snapshot of a student-athlete’s enrollment history, progress toward a degree, athletic participation and conduct status, among other data points.
The transfer portal was born when Division I adopted Proposal 2017-108, which replaced the prior "permission to contact" requirement. The now-defunct permission to contact standard required student-athletes to obtain written permission from their current institution before communicating with coaches and staff at another institution about the potential of transferring. A student-athlete communicating with another institution's coach without written permission from their current school could face consequences such as ineligibility to receive aid at a new school in the upcoming academic year.
In lieu of needing this “permission,” student-athletes now only have to provide notice to their institutions -- usually in the form of a written request submitted to the Athletics Compliance office which prompts their inclusion in the transfer portal.
In addition to eliminating the written permission requirement, this new legislation sought to add weight to the consequences of recruiting tampering (i.e. coaches from another school jumping the gun and speaking to student-athletes about transferring before notice is given). Specifically, the added weight came in the form of codifying tampering as a “significant breach of conduct” and the basis for a Level II violation finding through the NCAA infractions process.
The reality is that proving tampering is an age-old conundrum, as difficult as verifying Franco Harris’ Immaculate Reception was legitimate in the now-infamous 1972 AFC playoff game.
The lead-up to the adoption of the transfer portal included a lot of discussion about the timing of when student-athletes would submit transfer notice requests and, in turn, how coaches could manage the unpredictability of roster turnover.
With that in mind, a companion proposal that added some level of predictability as to the student-athlete's scholarship was adopted; namely, upon submitting notice of transfer, the student-athlete’s current institution could opt to cancel or reduce the student-athlete’s athletics scholarship at the conclusion of the academic term in which the notice was submitted. This provides a reasonable avenue for a head coach and athletics program to move forward in managing its roster. This created shared accountability between schools, coaches, and student-athletes.
When thinking about the newly minted transfer portal, it’s helpful to have a sense of the current state of transfer frequency by sports across Division I. In terms of transfer trends, men’s soccer has risen to the top of DI 4-4 (four year school to four year school) transfers with a transfer rate of 16.1%. Men’s basketball is second with a transfer rate of 14.3%, followed by men’s tennis (13.1%) and women’s basketball (13%).
It will be interesting to see in the coming years if there are discernible trends connecting the frequency of transfers in a particular sport with the on-boarding of the transfer portal in Fall 2018 -- a new day that has facilitated easier front-end transfer communications for student-athletes, albeit not without risk to their athletics scholarship.
Athletics Veritas is presented for information purposes only and should not be considered advice or counsel on NCAA compliance matters. For guidance on NCAA rules and processes, always consult your university’s athletics compliance office, conference office, and/or the NCAA.
