UCLA defensive back hits transfer portal

UCLA defensive back Josh Moore officially entered the transfer portal on Thursday afternoon, per On3’s Matt Zenitz. Moore was a former four-star prospect in the 2021 recruiting class, according to the On3 Consensus Rankings. Before enrolling with the UCLA Bruins, he also committed to the USC Trojans and the Stanford Cardinal at one point in time during his recruitment process.

He didn’t see any action in his first year with UCLA. When Moore committed to Stanford, he committed there to play defense. When he committed to the USC Trojans, he was going to play on the offensive side of the football at wide receiver. Then, with the Bruins, he flipped back to the defensive side of the ball. He chose the Bruins over Northwestern, Michigan State, and Stanford. Coming out of high school, recruiting analysts from across the country liked Moore’s skill set both on the offensive and defensive sides of the football.

It will be interesting to see where the former four-star ends up across the college football landscape.

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.