Georgia offensive lineman enters transfer portal

Georgia offensive lineman Owen Condon, who served as a backup during 2021’s National Championship run, has entered the transfer portal, according to On3’s Matt Zenitz. Despite playing most of his career as a reserve, the senior played in 14 of 15 games last season after making his first career start in 2020.

Before entering the transfer portal, Owen Condon won the 2021 Joel Eaves Award, given to the Georgia student-athlete with the highest GPA entering the fall semester of their senior year. He also helped found the DGD Fund, a charity started alongside John Staton IV, John FitzPatrick, Stetson Bennett and Payne Walker.

He came to the Bulldogs program as a four-star recruit in the 2018 class, ranked as the No. 5 prospect in his home state of Oklahoma. Condon chose Georgia over Army, TCU and Arizona State, among others.

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.

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.