Auburn quarterback Bo Nix announces he will enter the NCAA Transfer Portal

Auburn quarterback Bo Nix is entering the NCAA Transfer Portal, he announced on Sunday. The junior spent all of 2021 as the Tigers’ starting quarterback before an ankle injury caused him to miss the final two games.

Nix had surgery to repair the ankle and will need time to rehab before returning to the football field. He finished the season with 2,294 yards passing, 11 touchdowns and three interceptions.

The quarterback arrived in Auburn in 2019 with high expectations. His father, Patrick, played quarterback for the Tigers from 1992-95. Bo Nix was the No. 33 overall player in the 2019 class according to On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

He was the first freshman to start at quarterback for Auburn since 1946 and lived up to the hype, earning SEC Freshman of the Year. He broke Tigers freshman records for passing yards (2,542) and touchdowns (16) in 2019.

Nix returned the following year as a sophomore and earned team captain honors. He helped lead Auburn to a 6-4 finish against an all-SEC schedule and earn a trip to the Citrus Bowl.

In high school, Nix led Pinson Valley (Ala.) to two state titles with his father as coach. He gained over 12,000 career total yards of offense yards and scored 161 total touchdowns. His brother, Caleb Nix, is a quarterback in the 2022 class. He currently holds offers from Austin Peay, Troy, Dartmouth, Louisiana-Monroe and Samford.

NCAA 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.