Former Notre Dame cornerback announces transfer destination

Former Notre Dame Fighting Irish cornerback Caleb Offord has announced his commitment for the 2022 season. After entering the transfer portal early in January, the sophomore defensive back will head to Buffalo, NY, to join the Buffalo Bulls football program.

Offord, who ranked as a three-star recruit and the No. 483 overall recruit and No. 38 cornerback in the 2020 cycle per the On3 Consensus, played in three snaps as a true freshman, per Pro Football Focus.

During the 2021 campaign, the 6-1, 192-pounder played just seven snaps with the appearances coming against Navy and Toledo. But with Buffalo, Offord has a chance to compete for solid playing time or even start. Coming out of high school as a member of the 2020 recruiting class, he had several offers from top-end programs throughout the country. Offord fielded offers from Arkansas, Memphis, Vanderbilt, Purdue, and the Duke Blue Devils before finally committing to Notre Dame.

In Buffalo, he will join head coach Maurice Linguist, who is a former defensive back himself. Linguist has had a long run in coaching dating back to 2007. The former Baylor Bears safety has held coaching positions at both the collegiate and professional level; most recently, before accepting the head coaching precision with Buffalo, he was the Dallas Cowboys defensive back coach in 2020.

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.