Ole Miss quarterback enters NCAA Transfer Portal

Ole Miss quarterback John Rhys Plumlee has entered the NCAA Transfer Portal, he announced on Twitter.

“From the bottom of my heart, thank you. It is hard to put into words how grateful I truly am,” Plumlee said, in a letter penned to Ole Miss. “Although change is hard, I know change allows each of us to grow … I am unsure where I will be yet, but I am entering the transfer portal.”

Plumlee, a junior, started under center as a true freshman back in 2019, earning various All-American honors for his quarterbacking. He appeared in nine games with eight starts and holds the Ole Miss freshman rushing record with 1,023 yards, while also posting 16 total touchdowns (four passing and 12 rushing). He also threw for 910 yards, four touchdowns and three interceptions that year, but after the emergence of Matt Corral in 2020, Plumlee made a conversion to slot receiver.

The conversion didn’t quite go as planned, as Lane Kiffin noted, given that Plumlee went from backing up one of the nation’s top quarterbacks in Corral to backing up one of the nation’s best slot receivers in Dontario Drummond. In two years as a receiver, he caught 25 passes for 280 receiving yards.

A two-sport athlete, Plumlee also played for the Ole Miss baseball team. He played in 47 games last season for Ole Miss, making 18 starts, including 12 in right field and six in center field. He hit .267 with 21 runs scored, four doubles, one home run and seven runs batted in.

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.