Under New Transfer Portal Rules NCAA D-I Athletes Have Smaller Window To Change Schools

The NCAA Division 1 Council voted on Oct 4 to reduce the number of days students have to enter the transfer portal from 60 days down to 45 days. According to the NCAA, the move comes with the input of the D1 Student-Athlete Advisory Committee who supported the change. Data collected from the first year of the portal said that most students (60% of them) enter the transfer portal within 30 days of indicating their intent to transfer.

Cody Shrimp, Division 1 SAAC chair told the NCAA, “We are happy that the council was able to find common ground and push forward a 45-day window to continue to provide a reasonable period of time for student-athletes to make rational and informed decisions about their athletic and academic futures.”

Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) programs can start transferring beginning the Monday after FBS conference championship games and if student-athletes are in the postseason, there is an additional wait of five days after that.

For basketball players, the window will open for a period of 45 days following Selection Sunday, or the day when programs who are “on the bubble” of making the March Madness Tournament find out they are going to be in the tournament.

For most other winter and spring sports, it follows a similar arrangement to the football programs. Players are allowed 30 days for fall sports, starting seven days after a school’s championship selection and they also receive 15 days of transfer portal eligibility in the spring, May 1-15. For winter sports, that number changes to 45 days, beginning seven days after championship games are set. In spring, student-athletes will get a 30 day window starting 7 days after championship selection and they will also be eligible to transfer for 15 days in the fall, Dec 1-15.

Lydia Tealer, chair of the council and the deputy athletics director at the University of Florida told the NCAA, “In both men’s and women’s basketball, the council determined that a 45-day window that concludes on or before May 1 best enables coaches to understand their current rosters, provides stability for student-athletes remaining at the school as they prepare for summer basketball, and encourages student-athletes who intend to transfer to do so before final exams at their current schools and summer school application deadlines at most campuses.”

In addition to these changes, the council also agreed that FBS schools will no longer have attendance requirements and the application fee for schools when a student-athlete transfers from an FCS school to an FBS school is raised from $5,000 to $5 million. These two changes will go into effect immediately. FBS schools are required to give 90% of scholarships over a two-year period, including football. They are also going to be required to fund 210 scholarships yearly, not to amount to less than $6 million yearly, and these two stipulations will go into effect August 2027.