Florida Gators LB David Reese announces plans to enter NCAA Transfer Portal

Florida linebacker David Reese announced on his Twitter page on Sunday evening that he plans to enter the NCAA Transfer Portal. He played in 12 games during the 2022 season and registered two tackles. In the 2018 recruiting cycle, Reese was rated as a four-star prospect, according to the On3 Consensus Rankings.

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— David Reese (@DR4our) December 5, 2022

His announcement on Twitter reads: “First and foremost, I would like to thank god for blessing me with the ability to even play the game of football. On top of that, I would like to thank everyone who has supported me throughout these past few years. To the coaches and staff at UF, thank you for all the opportunity and continuous support for these past 4 years. With that being said, I will officially be entering my name in the transfer portal with 2 years of eligibility remaining.”

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 must 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 during the 2020-21 cycle after totals of 1,020 in 2019-20 and 1,063 in 2018-19.