Antonio Alfano finally enters name in NCAA transfer portal

Former top prospect fills out paperwork to leave Alabama and head to another college football program

Defensive lineman Antonio Alfano has finally entered his name into the NCAA transfer portal, completing the first step toward enrolling at another school. 

Although the true freshman enrolled early at Alabama, he left the team and stopped attending classes more than a month ago. 

The holdup on his entering the portal was Alfano himself, who finally filled out the necessary paperwork. 

The former consensus 5-star recruit's name was removed from the Alabama roster earlier Wednesday. 

Approximately a month ago, Nick Saban described Alfano has having disappeared. 

“He’s kind of disappeared a little bit,” the coach said. “I talked to our team today about the fact that, you know, people make mistakes. We all make mistakes: I make mistakes, probably everyone in this room makes mistakes, we make mistakes as parents, we make mistakes as coaches, we make mistakes in just about everything we do. But I think you compound the problem when you don’t confront the mistakes you make and you create greater consequences for yourself because of the choices and decisions you make after you make a mistake.”

Alfano’s parents subsequently released an explanation from their joint Twitter account, stating that he had stopped going to practice and classes due to his grandmother falling ill. 

However, he never returned to the team, avoided any  contact from the team and was longer enrolled at the university.

"I just know that the guy basically quit," Saban said. "He quit going to class, he quit coming here. We tried to encourage him, we tried to help him. We had tried to set up counseling sessions with him to help him every way we could. And all those things are still available to him if he wants them, but he didn’t respond to any of the things, so until he responds, you just have to assume the guy quit.” 

Alfano was 247Sports’ No. 1 overall prospect in the recruiting Class of 2019.