Players’ Perspective: The NCAA Transfer Portal

It's been about three years since the NCAA introduced its transfer portal, and two football players discuss what the process is like for student-athletes who are looking for new destinations.

Ah, the NCAA transfer portal. What a loaded concept. Some people like it, some people don’t. Some have grown to, some haven’t. That’s well and good and unfortunate. It’s here to stay, though, and improve functionally because, among other motives, student-athletes need it to.

Most of us don’t have desirable talent to play for college programs. We can’t lay back-breaking hits on the gridiron or pull off a reverse slam dunk in the open court. But we all look out for number one.

That’s been the objective of the transfer portal since its birth three years ago. That’s dependent on the visibility of the lens through which you see college athletics, though.

Student-athletes of sports governed by the NCAA are bound by the five-year clock and, outside of COVID-19-related exceptions, that means you have five calendar cycles to complete four years of playing eligibility.

Different divisions have distinct differences, too, like Division II labeling the five-year period as a 10-semester clock. Generally, though, the rules have rules and those do, too. There are, for instance, waivers granted for eligibility in special cases, and that also describes the one-time transfer exception which is pretty intuitive.

All, well, most said, the portal was a hit upon its inception and hasn't become less congested, either.

See, there were over 2,500 football players who decided to enter the portal since their last season ended, and some —most, definitely—weren’t pursued by Alabama or Georgia or Clemson or Ohio State. Nor did certain players leave because, despite one of the common narratives, their ego took up too much space in often-cramped locker rooms.

There’s a cliché thesis and it’s usually true: ‘There are two sides to every story.' Well, they're here and they’re from players you’ve likely never heard of, the players who help make up other 90-something percent of transfers in the NCAA talent pool. The next school must also state the student-athlete has met specific benchmarks to re-gain athletic action.

There’s Bennett Johnston, a quarterback and Birmingham native who decided to move on from Southern Miss, and there’s Noah Mitchell, a linebacker and Leakesville, Mississippi, native who entered the portal after playing at the University of Texas-San Antonio.

Both have different backgrounds, experiences, and reasons of leaving their former programs, and each are linked to certain threads undeniable to those who’ve lived as NCAA student-athletes, to those who leave the speculation to outsiders like you, me, and anyone else who’s followed the recent transfer trend. Between Facebook’ing, Instagram’ing and Tweeting, we’ve said plenty.

Now, they have the (proverbial) floor.

Bennett Johnston's transfer experience:

At home in Birmingham, Johnston sits on his front porch as we discuss what’s next.

Like most prospects, he’d likely have wanted to play for in-state powers Auburn and Alabama, but I’m not sure any one player wouldn’t. He’d played at Mountain Brook High and attracted the attention of college coaches as a signal caller.

“It was, ‘Do I want to go somewhere, play right now, compete for a national championship, and just love playing football, or do I want to go play at the big level?’”

Did he want to play at a Division I school, Johnston wondered, before conceding being a quarterback at that level was too tempting to decline. Regardless of playing time, he knew he belonged as a DI athlete. But that’s not saying opportunities wouldn’t find him due west of Mobile, Alabama, no.

“I couldn’t turn that down, so I chose Southern Miss and I loved it. I loved it all last year and even going into the spring this year,” he said. “Coach Jay Hopson, who’s at Mississippi State now, gave me a shot and said, ‘Look, I believe in you and you can be a great player here.’”

But, as happens at every school in every sport, Hopson left the program and a new staff was introduced thereafter. It was just as Johnston had begun to establish himself in the Golden Eagles quarterback room. It was a writing on the wall type of deal. 

Old relationships frayed and new ones weren't sewn quite as well as the one's before.

“At the end of the day, what I told coach [Will] Hall is, ‘I want to go somewhere that allows me to compete and be a bigger part of the team.’”

He decided to transfer, enter his name in the portal, and that was it. It was a short-lived experience at the DI school, but one Johnston hoped wouldn’t be his last as college football player. Soon he’d realize what life inside the transfer pool entailed, and it surpassed expectations.

The immediate response from coaches was "crazy," he said, and within 20 minutes schools had expressed interest.

Johnston had options, he quickly learned, which meant more focus on the decision process and working out in preparation for the upcoming season. So, after returning home, he began to work out with local quarterback coach Ben Neil who noticed something was different. He didn’t have the usual velocity on his throws. That’s when, as essentially a college football free agent, Johnston consulted with doctors and found out he had suffered an injury to his throwing shoulder.

“Two weeks ago, I found out I have a torn labrum, so on August 23, I go to find out if I need surgery or not and what’s needed to recover," he said.

An inconvenience if there ever was one, the injury to Johnston's throwing shoulder means he'll miss the 2021 college football season and spend the next number of months rehabbing as an unsigned player who's still listed in the transfer portal.

Not ideal, terrible timing, whatever you want to call it, the sidelined signal caller has, with good guidance, gained perspective on how he'll spend the process of being recruited all over again.

“My parents have been very relaxed about it. They said, ‘Hey man, you’re fine," Johnston said. "My quarterback trainer in Birmingham has been a huge help, too, because he’s been around it before."

It's the 'dark side' of the game, as all typically admit, and it's compounded when you can't get to (any) campus and prepare for the season. It's an extended absence, one Johnston is unfamiliar with as a player.

But, for anybody, it'd also be a chance to mature, to prevent similar things from reoccurring, to revise a decision that didn't go your way initially, to consider things you'd like to have considered coming out of high school.

"Sometimes you have to take a step back to take steps forward, and now that I’ve played D-I I know what I’m looking for in terms of opportunity," Johnston said. "And I do have a great knowledge of what to look for, and I believe I’m able to succeed at that level.”

Now, though, that time will have to be more delayed than originally expected when he entered the portal, and the decision of where to enroll next will have been after he's a football fan in the fall for the first since Johnston can remember. "Ever."

Noah Mitchell's transfer experience:

If the third time is the charm, then what's the second, a sign of better things ahead?

Mitchell hopes that's true for him after he enrolled at Pearl River Community College in Poplarville, Mississippi, then left to attend the University of Texas-San Antonio where he played linebacker on the football team. Then, after last season, he entered the transfer portal and returned to Pearl River.

It was, at least partially, due to late his entrance into the talent market and, subsequently, the reluctance to expedite relationships and re-recruitment.

“The reason I chose UTSA was because of the relationship I had with the defensive coordinator at the time, coach [Tyrone] Nix," Mitchell said. "That’s who I felt most comfortable with, and so did my family and everyone that helped me make the decision.”

Leaving Pearl River the first time was supposed to be his last time, but, fortunately for Mitchell, he had preserved the bonds built there, and after Nix was let go from UTSA it was a safety net of sorts. Not that he didn't stay in San Antonio to try and maintain what he'd started. He did. But reciprocation is another story.

“The new linebackers coach they brought in just couldn’t really seem to ever get on the same page. It never really took off and that’s why I left," Mitchell said. “You build a relationship with one guy, get close to him, get familiar with him, then he leaves."

"It sucks, honestly.”

For those whose interest was piqued by college football long before the transfer portal existed, it's been an interesting dilemma to hear about and analyze as an outsider, one that basically means a new coach is hired and favors the players he handpicked himself.

The rest, barring stardom, are more-frequently-than-originally-thought considered to be outsiders clawing for the chance to reestablish relationships with members of the program. And as a player who decides to transfer late into the offseason calendar, you're likely at the 'final straw' stage of affairs.

“I stayed through the summer to see if it would get any better. It never did and my mind was made up after that," Mitchell said. "About three weeks ago, I was like, ‘Well, it’s best that I leave.’”

That was that, as it goes, and he had to reset his compass to look for somewhere else to be a student, an athlete, and, ultimately, a linebacker in college football. But three weeks ago was almost August and fall camps were about to begin nationwide.

Still, in hopes of immediacy over football intimacy, coaches contacted Mitchell as soon as his name hit the market, and he had to decide, to weigh the good and bad of what's a rush decision, a should-be definitive claim to where he'd end up for good.

“Pretty much all of them wanted me now," he said. “But, with me, it was tough to say, ‘Alright, I’ll go to another D-I.’”

“I didn’t want to get burned again."

The timing was off. It was too late into the summer, and this would be his second time transferring from school-to-school. 

Still, though, Mitchell felt comfortable knowing that with one more season of film at Pearl River, one more semester to make an educated decision of the next destination, and one more go-round with the team's coaches, he'd still be a priority for certain college football programs throughout the fall and until he'd plan on signing in January.

“They’ll all still recruit me during the fall and get me on visits, so that was good to hear," he said. "Coach [Pete] Golding at Alabama has talked to me, and Mississippi State and Utah State hit me up recently."

The linebacker knows how everything works at that level, though, and knows what he's looking for in terms of being valued as more than a roster spot good for depth and not much more.

“Whatever school is in best need for a linebacker, whoever has the most need, and whoever I have the best relationship with is who I’ll be looking for." Mitchell said.

There you have it, folks, the articulated thesis of what college football transfers are searching for and weren't able to fully capture at their previous stop. 

Regardless of how you, or I, or, really, everyone feels about the transfer portal, it's fair to say none of us know exactly what we want when we're young and in college. Heck, that can mean you can't recognize how good you have it until it's gone, too, which is concerning considering the mass exodus of players from programs around the country.

But for now, the players have spoken.