What to expect when spring transfer portal window opens Saturday

As spring practice wraps up around the country, coaches and personnel are also now preparing for the upcoming second wave of college football free agency. The spring transfer portal window opens Saturday and runs through April 30. It’s a 15-day stretch that will give undergraduate players a final chance to enter the portal prior to the start of the 2023 season.

Matt Zenitz, On3’s senior national college football writer, breaks down what you need to know in advance of the window opening.

Previous transfer portal window

This spring window comes after the initial portal window, which ran from Dec. 5 to Jan. 18.

During that 45-day winter window, 1,325 FBS scholarship players entered the portal, which equates to an average of roughly 10 players per team.

While the list of players lacked some of the top-end star power of the 2021-22 winter portal cycle, when players such as eventual Heisman winner Caleb Williams went into the portal, the winter portal cycle did still include some big-name moves like former top recruit Travis Hunter following Deion Sanders from Jackson State to Colorado. It also included All-ACC quarterback Sam Hartman going from Wake Forest to Notre Dame.

What role will NIL play in April’s transfer portal window?

“I thought it was a little less talented than I would have expected,” a high-ranking team official said.

“The reason is schools are able to come together with some money to keep their guys. I think schools did a great job of retention in the winter period. There weren’t as many upper-echelon players, I thought at least, in the portal. I also think it’s smart for teams to do that and try to keep their own guys because you’ll probably get a little bit of a bargain in NIL with a guy staying versus a guy you’ll get in the portal.”

How teams are prepping for spring window

For at least some teams that plan on being active with adding players during this spring window, the prep work has been ongoing for an extended period of time.

Multiple Power 5 personnel staffers told On3 that members of their departments have been busy studying depth charts around the country in an attempt to identify players that could be possibilities to enter the portal.

One team, for example, mentioned having a personnel staffer focused entirely on portal prep for the last month or so. In addition to calling around for scuttlebutt and looking team-by-team to try and identify potential portal entries, that staffer has already scouted and watched tape on roughly 100 players in order to be able to share quick feedback with the staff if or when those players do ultimately enter the portal.

That’s far from uncommon.

Staffers from multiple other Power 5 teams mentioned similar advance work and, in at least some cases, already having grades on possible portal entries that can then be compared to the team’s current roster and put the staff in a position to make quick decisions if players do end up going into the portal.

“At certain positions of need, we’ve been pretty active and trying to just evaluate as many guys as possible just so it takes less time when the portal opens,” a personnel official said.

“If you’re going to have 100 guys go in on Monday the 17th, you might as well have already evaluated 30 to 40 of them so that you know right away whether it’s a guy you want rather than spending 10 minutes and then other guys go in and you get backlogged and all that. We’ve been pretty active on it.”

Some teams will be patient with transfer portal

There are other teams, though, taking more of a wait-and-see approach, including one highly-ranked program from last year that already added close to double-digit transfers from the winter portal window.

“Outside of the advanced scout stuff that we do, we may dabble here and there and look at a guy or two that maybe has good stats or whatever,” a personnel official from that team said. “But, especially going into this portal opening, we really haven’t done a ton of just coming up with names to say, ‘Hey, this guy could be a possibility if he got in the portal and stuff like that,’

“We haven’t really dabbled in that just because on this round of it I think we would be very selective and just try to bolster some depth pieces. Obviously, there’ll be other teams in different situations. But for us, you’d like to bolster some, a guy that doesn’t have to play 600 snaps or whatever it is, but a guy that can play maybe 200 snaps and be ready to go for 2024. That kind of thing.”

Knowing your roster is key heading into opening

Another personnel staffer emphasized the importance of, first and foremost, being up to speed on your own roster.

“You have to have an awareness of whether your player is thinking about leaving or not and what it’s going to take to keep him before you can move on to acquiring players because everyone’s under a certain amount of money they can spend, right?” he said. “So, you have to figure out what it’s going to take to keep yours and then the money that’s leftover, allocate it to guys in the portal. I think first of all when spring ball’s over, everyone’s going to probably meet with their players – as they probably have been throughout all spring – just to constantly have awareness if anyone is reaching out to them if there’s any smoke around them leaving for other schools. 

“And then step one, if you want the guy, you’ve got to put an end to that by counteroffering or enticing him to stay or whatever you want to call it. And then I think it all goes back to relationships with your players. It shouldn’t take one exit meeting at the end of spring to know whether a guy’s thinking about leaving or not. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. If you’re doing your job well, you’ll have an idea of the guys you might need to have those conversations with prior to the portal window opening.”

Expectations for spring transfer portal window

While the portal windows weren’t in place before August, a look back at last year’s spring portal period is helpful in attempting to figure out what’s to come these next couple of weeks.

Although the portal windows weren’t established yet, there was still a May 1 deadline last year for undergraduates to enter the portal in order to be eligible for the 2022 season. So, there were similarities with players having through the end of April to make decisions on the portal after finishing up with spring practice.

With that in mind, there were 321 FBS scholarship players that entered the portal from April 15 through the May 1 deadline last year, which included moves such as All-American wide receiver Jordan Addison transferring from Pittsburgh to USC. 

There was also an additional 139 FBS scholarship players that went into the portal from March 15 to April 14 of last year, including wide receiver Agiye Hall (Alabama to Texas), cornerback Lejond Cavazos (Ohio State to North Carolina) and others like Georgia offensive lineman Amarius Mims, who briefly entered the portal before deciding to remain with the Bulldogs.

Since undergraduates haven’t been able to enter the portal until April 15 this year, it’s fair to expect the number of entries to be much higher than 321 between the start and end of this spring portal window.

Compared to the 139 players that went into the portal between March 15 and April 14 of last year, only 34 FBS scholarship players have gone into the portal since March 15 of this year as of Wednesday morning.

“I think there’ll be a good number of players,” one personnel staffer said. “I think it’ll be a combination of schools that need to cut ties with players and kind of trim the fat on their roster. So, if you see guys that have never played before, it’s probably because they’re getting removed, and then a bunch of guys that may have been persuaded through the back channels to go in that teams with needs have pushed along through their high school coach or whatever the case may be. I do think it’ll be a pretty busy spring.”

‘There’s going to be a lot of garbage’

In addition to the player acquisition aspect, there will be plenty of teams looking to move on from back end of the roster type players in an attempt to get under the limit of 85 scholarship players.

“We definitely think there’s going to be a lot of garbage,” a personnel staffer said. “We do. What I mean by that is, you’ve got to think summer enrollees haven’t come in yet. So, in the first portal window, everyone was taking, quite frankly, probably as many as they could and just gathering pieces and talent. And now everyone’s going to have to turn around for spring ball because they’ve used these 15 practices as kind of a tryout for probably everyone’s bottom half of the roster.

“Everyone in the country is looking at their scholarship number going, ‘All right, we’ve got seven spots we’ve got to find, right?’ Which every one’s got some fat, whether you’re Ohio State or you’re Akron. Everyone’s got some fat. I think you’re going to see a lot of that. You’re gonna be sifting through a lot of gunk.”

Another personnel official added that this part of the portal likely will be teams dumping what they have to balance out rosters, especially the higher quality programs.

“That’s kind of the situation that we’re in,” the staffer continued. “And basically, where a lot of kids are right now, especially Group of 5 kids and all that. I’m sure there are a lot of people right now and maybe even kids themselves that might be talking to NFL agents and they’re probably like, ‘Hey, I think it’s going to do wonders for you if you can go try to play at a higher level this year.’ 

“I would say those would be the types of kids that these schools would be looking at and then teams like us, hopefully, we don’t lose anyone that we want. But I would say it’s just kind of trying to unload the bottom end of the roster and just keep trying to improve the depth and kind of go from there.”

Spring games impact when players enter portal

Unlike the winter portal window, when the number of entrants progressively dipped after the window initially opened, there could be more of a steady flow of entries throughout this portal cycle because of teams closing out spring practice at different points.

There are 21 Power 5 teams that don’t have spring games until next weekend. There are another seven FBS teams, including Power 5 programs in Oregon, Maryland and Rutgers, whose spring games aren’t until April 29.

“That’s one thing I think is different relative to the fall window is just that all of these spring games and everything ends at different times,” a personnel staffer said. “With the fall window, most of the seasons were done by (December 5) and the bowl game was later. It was a little bit easier. But so many spring games don’t end until the 29th, so I do think it’s going to be waves because some guys aren’t going to want to leave in the middle of spring ball.

“I think the disjointed ending to the spring will dictate probably the waves in which guys go in if I was betting.”