Vanderbilt WR Will Sheppard plans to enter Transfer Portal

Vanderbilt WR Will Sheppard announced his intentions to enter the transfer portal Sunday afternoon.

The 6’3 200 WR will have 1 year of eligibility remaining.

Sheppard sent a message to On3:

I would like to start off by thanking Coach Mason for giving me the opportunity to fulfill my dreams. Thank you to the teammates and ones who stuck by me and kept it real from start to finish. I’ve created bonds that will last forever. Finally, thank you to my family for believing in me and supporting me everyday. 

With that being said I will be entering my name into the transfer portal and am excited for the next step in reaching the ultimate goal. 

Bless, 

Will Sheppard

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.

He currently does not have an On3 NIL Valuation publicly listed. The On3 NIL Valuation is the industry’s leading index that sets high school and college athletes’ projected annual value (PAV). The NIL valuation does not act as a tracker of the value of NIL deals an athlete has completed to date. It rather signifies an athlete’s value at a certain moment in time.