WATCH: Eli Drinkwitz shares his thoughts on transfer portal

It’s Wednesday, Feb. 2, the official National Signing Day for college football. While the date used to be treated as a national holiday for college football fans across the country, the excitement has been muted in the past year due to the transfer portal. Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz shared his thoughts on the transfer portal today on The Paul Finebaum Show. Like most college football coaches across the country, he doesn’t like it.

"I don't like that every player on your roster is a free agent at the end of the year."

-Eliah Drinkwitz cites the example of Tyler Badie as a player who thrived while avoiding the transfer portal pic.twitter.com/7ftxyYZnrW

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) February 2, 2022

Here are the transcribed version of Drinkwitz’s comments today. “I don’t necessarily like that everybody on your roster is a free agent at the end of the year. And I think anytime you have 85 players on your team that were probably the best players on their high school team, there’s gonna be some growing pains. There’s gonna be some developmental pains,” Drinkwitz said.

“If players stick to it they can develop into great players. Look for us–Tyler Badie last year…waited his turn to play as a senior. Didn’t transfer. Didn’t go to the portal. Turns out, sets a single season record, having a hell of a Senior Bowl down there this week. And is gonna be a player that put himself in a position to play at the next level for a long time. That’s just a tribute to him and sticking to it…” said the Missouri head coach.

It’ll be interesting to see how the transfer portal is regulated moving forward, or if the NCAA decides to do nothing. They’re likely scared to change anything with the portal for one big reason: litigation. They just lost one of the biggest cases in the history of sports law in the NCAA vs. Alston case. It remains to be seen if and when the NCAA will step in.

The voices of many different coaches across the college football landscape have only gotten louder and louder in the past year in calling for changes to the portal. One of those coaches that has called for changes is Southern California’s Lincoln Riley.

For all the latest news about where all the different college football prospects around the country are headed, keep it locked in to the On3 2022 College Football Transfer Portal Wire.

More on the NCAA Transfer Portal

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.