Marshawn Lloyd calls on South Carolina fans to recruit Alabama transfer

South Carolina running back Marshawn Lloyd is one of the more explosive running backs in all of college football. But every running back is always tethered to the success of their offensive line. Like many other college football stars across the country, Lloyd has his eyes on the transfer portal and wants the Gamecocks to reel in one of the nation’s very best offensive linemen, Alabama offensive tackle Javion Cohen.

The gifted running back took to Twitter on Friday evening to tell the Gamecock faithful to recruit Cohen to South Carolina.

Gamecock nation, go get our boy! https://t.co/hHsOY7D0iH

— MarShawn Lloyd (@m_lloyd_2) December 10, 2022

“Gamecock nation, go get our boy!” Lloyd wrote. If the Gamecocks could land Cohen out of the transfer portal, it’d be a massive land. He’s one of the most coveted offensive line prospects in the portal.

Cohen was one of the more surprising names to pop up in the transfer portal this year. He started for two years for the Crimson Tide and has not allowed a single sack during his college football career.

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 must 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 during the 2020-21 cycle after totals of 1,020 in 2019-20 and 1,063 in 2018-19.