Texas offensive lineman enters NCAA Transfer Portal

Texas is losing some of its offensive line depth to the transfer portal.

Tyler Johnson entered the portal on Thursday, On3’s Matt Zenitz has learned. Johnson has been with the Longhorns for three years, but only played in one game in his career. He redshirted his freshman year in 2019 and didn’t play during the 2021 season.

Johnson’s lone appearance came in 2020 in the Alamo Bowl when Texas took on Colorado. In that game, Texas scored 55 points and had more than 300 passing yards and 300 rushing yards in a game for the first time in program history.

He arrived in Austin as a four-star recruit and the No. 9 offensive tackle recruit from the class of 2019, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. Out of high school, he held big-time offers from USC, Michigan, Georgia and Alabama, among many others.

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.