The NCAA has just thrown a new wrench into the transfer portal machine, with changes coming immediately for men’s basketball, women’s basketball, and football. Effective now, the transfer notification windows—the period in which student-athletes can declare their intent to transfer—are getting a bit more structure, or maybe more chaos, depending on how you look at it.
For basketball (both men’s and women’s), the new 30-day transfer window will open the day after the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Now, if a team finds itself knocked out in the tournament, players won’t have much time to pack their bags before deciding if they want to stick around or test the waters elsewhere. The good news: if they’ve been pondering a move, they’ll have a full month to figure things out, with no rush to declare as soon as the final buzzer sounds.
Football players, meanwhile, have been given a similarly divided 30-day window. The window will split across two periods: 20 days after the FBS conference championship weekend in December, and then a shorter 10-day stretch in spring. This year, those dates are set for December 9–28 and April 16–25. So, college football athletes now get a few more restful nights before weighing whether or not they want to enter the portal after their conference title game or wait until spring.
But the chaos doesn’t stop there! In all sports, players can still enter the transfer portal if their head coach departs, with a special 30-day window starting the day after a coaching change is announced. We all know how college football and basketball coaching carousels spin wildly, and this addition ensures that students have a chance to reevaluate their commitment when the sidelines get a shake-up.
As always, the NCAA’s council decisions aren’t final until the full meeting concludes on Wednesday, but this new era of portal-hopping appears to be locked and loaded. Whether you love it or hate it, college athletes just gained a little more agency over their futures—just as long as they can make up their minds in 30 days.