Overwhelming Majority Of Players In Transfer Portal Have Not Landed Offers
What happens when the NCAA gives football players an extra year of eligibility due to COVID, transfer portal free agency and an incoming freshman class of new bodies ready to grind it out for a scholarship? You have college football players without scholarships looking for a home.
According to Keith Grabowski, host of The Coach & Coordinator podcast, an astounding 72% of the players in the 2021 transfer portal do not have a home. Out of 1,074 players in the portal, just 299 (28%) have a school to attend on scholarship in 2021. According to 247's unofficial transfer portal tracker -- since the NCAA doesn't allow us to see the actual portal -- there are currently 126 quarterbacks in the 2021 transfer portal.
Add in a 25-man signing limit for NCAA member schools, and you have limited spaces available for transferring players.
Sports Illustrated reports though that the numbers may be skewed by walk-ons, who are also allowed to enter the transfer portal. "As of , only 964 of the 1,500 FBS players in the portal garnered a recruiting ranking from 247Sports (a vast majority of the other 500 are walk-ons)," SI's Ross Dellenger notes.
What happens to a majority of the players who do find a school? Most drop down a level. "Of the 299 Power Five players who have committed to a new school, 60% took a step down in level, their next destination a Group of Five or FCS school," Dellenger writes.
Coaches have been predicting players will have nowhere to go and that appears to be happening sooner rather than later. Pete Thamel wrote in December that players using their COVID year are going to push out younger players who will further bloat the portal. Teams will be limited to the 85-scholarship and the 25-man incoming freshman limit. Do the math.
“I do think there are a lot of guys who’ll end up holding the bag without a place to go,” said Rivals.com Southeast recruiting analyst Woody Wommack told Yahoo!. “You have the class of 2021 signing, the most transfers ever and a senior class that isn’t going anywhere. That’s made it really cloudy.”
One Group of Five head coach painted a clear picture for parents out there: "If your son is in high school and he has a 2022 scholarship offer, he should commit right now.”
At this point, it appears that a vast majority of players who entered the 2021 transfer portal will have a serious problem finding the funding to attend a new school, and many run the risk of not playing football at all.
“I feel really bad for the 2021-22 high school kids,” an NCAA Division I football assistant coach told FootballScoop.com. “The COVID-19 impact and extra year of eligibility made it very difficult, and now adding the (expected) first year of NCAA free agency to that as well makes it the hardest time ever to be that ‘tweener’ kid.
“Extending the scholarship limits sounds great, but there’s maybe 20 schools in all of college football that could (financially) carry the burden of 25 extra scholarships for a period reaching possibly up to five years.”