The NCAA made a surprising announcement yesterday evening that it will be changing the structure of the college basketball transfer portal. This announcement comes after two years of pressure from college basketball coaches and institutions asking the NCAA to bring more regulation to the transfer portal.
The NCAA announced on Wednesday that going forward, men’s and women’s basketball players will not be able to enter the portal until the day after the NCAA Tournament ends in their respective sports.
Additionally, the portal will be open for 15 days, not the 30 or 45 days like we have seen in the past. However, just because they shrunk the time that a player can enter the portal, there is still no time limit for when a player can commit to a team after they have entered, and they can announce their intentions to enter before the portal actually opens as well.
This move will go a long way in making sure teams can stay focused during postseason tournaments.
A couple of other changes have been announced as well regarding the transfer portal window for players whose schools have fired their head coach, according to the NCAA press release.
“When a head coaching change occurs, a 15-day period will open five days after the new head coach is hired or publicly announced. If a new head coach is not announced within 30 days of the previous head coach’s departure — and the 31st day after the head coach’s departure is after the championship game — a 15-day window will open. The additional head coach departure window is available only after the basketball transfer window opens through Jan. 2.”
The end of the men’s basketball Final Four is set for April 6th of this year, meaning that the transfer portal will open on the 7th and remain open until the 21st. Women’s basketball will have its transfer portal open a day earlier on the 6th, and it will stay open until the 20th.
They also addressed mid- year transfers for basketball in their press release. According to the release, athletes are not eligible to play at a second school if they were at a different school during the first term of the academic school year. This applies whether the athlete actually played a sport at their first school or not.
A few changes were made to the wrestling transfer portal as well.
“In men’s wrestling, the transfer window will be 30 days, beginning April 1 each year. The previous window, which was 45 days, began after selections for the Division I Men’s Wrestling Championships.”
These changes should go a long way in regulating the usually chaotic period of the mentioned transfer portals.
