South Carolina wide receiver Rico Powers enters transfer portal
South Carolina wide receiver Rico Powers is in the NCAA transfer portal, Gamecock Central has confirmed.
Gamecocks head coach Shane Beamer said Saturday following the Garnet and Black spring game that Powers was not currently with the team, though at the time he didn’t address whether Powers might be back with the program.
Now it appears his time with the team has officially come to an end.
Powers, who was entering his third year in the program, joined South Carolina as an On3Consensus four-star prospect out of Hapeville Charter in Atlanta in the 2020 class, though he played sparingly in his two years in Columbia.
Power played in 11 total games, catching four passes for 31 yards in his South Carolina career. He only played in two games last year with two catches.
A native of Savannah, Ga., Powers was ranked the No. 48 wide receiver and No. 275 overall prospect in his class by the On3 Consensus — a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.
Powers is the sixth South Carolina football player to announce plans to enter the transfer portal this week, joining offensive lineman Will Rogers, wide receiver E.J. Jenkins, wide receiver Eric Shaw, defensive lineman Keem Green and defensive lineman DeVontae Davis.
Transfer portal background info
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.
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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.
