SMU offers West Virginia DL transfer Michael Lockhart
West Virginia defensive lineman Michael Lockhart entered the transfer portal over the weekend and now has an offer from SMU, he announced on Twitter.
Lockhart just finished his second season with the Mountaineers after he spent his first three at Georgia Tech. In his pair of campaigns in Morgantown, Lockhart posted 34 tackles and 2.5 sacks. The 2.5 sacks came this fall and put him in the top-five on the team in that statistic.
Over his five collegiate seasons, Lockhart has 61 tackles and three sacks to his name. He’ll have one year of eligibility remaining.
Lockhart played high school football at Huffman (AL) where he was a three-star prospect. He was the No. 796 overall recruit in the 2019 cycle according to the On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. He finished as a Top-100 DL as well as a Top-50 player out of Alabama.
SMU’s now hoping to land Lockhart, but competition is stiff with programs like Boston College, Washington, Colorado and others after him.
Lockhart taking advantage of NCAA Transfer Portal
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.
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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.
