What are the NCAA transfer portal rules?

The transfer portal has changed college sports forever and here’s a refresher on the NCAA transfer portal rules with some of the new changes. 

College football is never going to be the same after NIL has been adopted and the one-time transfer portal exception was put into place by the NCAA.

We saw during the first transfer portal window that it was akin to the wild, wild west. At the very least, it was pretty similar to NFL free agency and players hit the transfer portal and position-needy college football teams pounced, NIL deals in hand, to upgrade their rosters.

The good news is that the NCAA has tried to put more order into the transfer portal by separating it into different windows. Here are those transfer portal windows according to the NCAA:

• For fall sports, a 45-day transfer window begins with a given sport’s “championship selection” (i.e., bowl game announcements or release of NCAA tournament brackets).
• For winter sports, a 60-day transfer window begins with a given sport’s championship selection.
• For spring sports, a 45-day transfer window begins with a given sport’s championship selection.

It should also be noted that things are a little bit different if you are a graduate transfer. You are allowed to transfer at any time. Any student-athlete is now allowed a one-time transfer where they don’t have to sit out a year, regardless of the reason for the transfer.

That’s the biggest change over the years. Players could always transfer but they had to sit out a year to do so and that was enough to keep loads of players from doing it.

But now these athletes are free to go once, whenever they want, and wherever they want. It’s changed college sports as we know them, especially football and basketball.

A player can be eligible after transferring a second time, but a waiver is required. In college football, the two major transfer portal windows are right after the regular season ends, and in May, soon after spring football has concluded.