South Carolina wide receiver Rico Powers enters transfer portal

According to Matt Zenitz of On3, South Carolina Gamecocks wide receiver Rico Powers has entered the NCAA transfer portal. Powers would have been entering his third year with a program and attempting to break into the offensive rotation.

During his time with South Carolina, Powers appeared in 11 games. Only two came during the 2021 season, taking a redshirt year to keep a year of eligibility. Powers caught four passes for 31 yards, with all coming during SEC play.

Powers was a four-star prospect according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting services, coming out of high school. He was a top 50 wide receiver at No. 48 and is a native of Savannah, GA.

During his original recruitment, programs such as Arkansas, Georgia, Nebraska, and Tennessee were involved with Powers. Now, they can once again try to bring him in with his name in the transfer portal.

Transfer portal background information for Powers, South Carolina Gamecocks

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.