Auburn cornerback officially enters NCAA Transfer Portal

The Auburn secondary took a hit on Wednesday as one of its cornerbacks hit the transfer portal.

Cornerback Ro Torrence has entered the portal, On3’s Matt Zenitz has learned. Torrence arrived at Auburn from the Class of 2021 and was committed to Tennessee at one point during his recruiting.

He played in 10 games for the Tigers in 2021 season and had five total tackles, including four solo stops. His best game came in the Birmingham Bowl against Houston when he had three tackles, a forced fumble and a pass breakup.

In addition to Tennessee and Auburn, Utah State expressed interest in Torrence after he made the jump to Division I from Hutchinson Community College.

Auburn is coming off a 6-7 overall record and 3-5 mark in SEC in 2021 — Bryan Harsin’s first season as Tigers head coach.

Transfer portal background information 

The NCAA Transfer Portal, which covers every NCAA sport at the Division I, II and III levels, is a private database with names of student-athletes who wish to transfer. It is not accessible to the public.

The process of entering the portal is done through a school’s compliance office. Once a player provides written notification of an intent to transfer, the office enters the player’s name in the database and everything is off and running. The compliance office has 48 hours to comply with the player’s request and that request cannot be refused.

Once a player’s name shows up in the portal, other schools can contact the player. Players can change their minds at any point and withdraw from the portal. However, once a player enters the portal, the current scholarship no longer has to be honored. In other words, if a player enters the portal but decides to stay, the school is not obligated to provide a scholarship anymore.

The database is a normal database, sortable by a variety of topics, including (of course) sport and name. A player’s individual entry includes basic details such as contact info, whether the player was on scholarship and whether the player is transferring as a graduate student.

A player can ask that a “do not contact” tag be placed on the report. In those instances, the players don’t want to be  contacted by schools unless they’ve initiated the communication.

The portal has been around since Oct. 15, 2018 and the new calendar cycle within the portal begins each August. For example, the 2021-22 cycle started Aug. 1. During the 2020-21 cycle, 2,626 FBS football players entered the transfer portal (including walk-ons). That comes after 1,681 entered during the 2019-20 cycle and 1,709 during the abbreviated 2018-19 cycle. In comparison, 1,833 Division I basketball players entered the portal during the 2020-21 cycle after totals of 1,020 in 2019-20 and 1,063 in 2018-19.