North Carolina Tar Heel defender makes decision on his future

The North Carolina Tar Heels have just lost a former starter from their defense. According to Matt Zenitz of On3 Sports, former starting linebacker Tyrone Hopper will be leaving the program via the transfer portal.

Hopper is a graduate student who last started for the Tar Heels back in 2020. During that year, he appeared in 12 games and started 10 of them. Over his five-year career at North Carolina, only in his senior year, the aforementioned 2020 year, did Hopper start for the majority of the season.
Unfortunately, his 2021 campaign was cut short with a season-ending injury suffered in September against Virginia Tech. He recorded just two tackles in that game before exiting early with an upper-body injury.

Early in his career at North Carolina, Hopper spent time as a defensive end and rush end but was moved to linebacker during his junior year.

Although Hopper was considered a super senior and given an extra year of eligibility due to the COVID shortened 2020 season, he will not lose his extra year of eligibility. With the injury happening so early in the season he will be allowed one more season of play.

His time with the Tar Heels with 61 total tackles, 25 solo, 5 tackles for loss, 4.5 sacks, 3 pass deflections, and one forced fumble.

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.