Former UCLA wide receiver announces Pac-12 destination

A former member of the UCLA Bruins football team entered the transfer portal this off-season and on Friday evening, he officially announced his destination on Twitter. Former Bruins wide receiver Chase Cota announced he would be returning home to play for the Oregon Ducks and their new head coach, Dan Lanning.

Cota was rated as a four-star prospect in the 2018 recruiting class, according to the On3 Consensus Rankings. He was ranked as the second-best overall prospect from the state of Oregon that year, according to the rankings. The 6-foot-3 wideout was selected to play in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl and played his high school football at South Medford High School (Medford, Oregon).

In 2021, he saw action in all 12 games for the Bruins, making three catches in at least five games (Arizona State, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado). Cota tallied his season-high of four catches against the Sun Devils. During the past four years with UCLA, the Oregon native tallied 883 receiving yards and six touchdown catches.

He is currently ranked as the 20th best wide receiver prospect in the On3 2022 Transfer Portal Rankings.

Oregon also landed the Bo Nix experience

In joining Oregon, Cota joins former Auburn quarterback Bo Nix as another offensive prospect the Ducks landed in their 2022 Transfer Portal class. It will be interesting to see if Oregon lands any more prospects for the rest of the 2022 off-season.

For constant updates on where all the different college football prospects are going this off-season, keep it locked into the 2022 On3 Transfer Portal Wire.

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.