Former Notre Dame pitcher Will Mercer announces transfer to Texas

Notre Dame pitcher Will Mercer will transfer to play for Texas in 2024, he announced Tuesday on Twitter. Mercer spent the past five seasons with the Fighting Irish and will have one year of eligibility remaining.

This past season, Mercer posted a 2.43 ERA with 37 strikeouts across 33.1 innings. Notre Dame finished with a 30-24 record but failed to make the NCAA Tournament after back-to-back appearances in 2021 and 2022.

Thank you to Notre Dame for an unforgettable academic and baseball experience. I am excited to announce my commitment to the University of Texas for my final year. #HookEm 🤘 pic.twitter.com/Q5SnY2ntWT

— Will Mercer (@willmercer43) June 20, 2023

With his transfer to Texas, Mercer joins a Longhorns team that finished 42-22 this past season and advanced to Super Regional play. He’ll surely be a valuable addition for coach David Pierce as the team moves to the SEC next year.

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.