Auburn wide receiver JJ Evans announces intention to enter transfer portal

Auburn is losing some wide receiver depth to the transfer portal. JJ Evans announced his decision to transfer Wednesday night.

Evans took to Twitter to make his announcement that he’s leaving the program after two years. He didn’t play a game during his time on The Plains.

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“I never thought I would say this but I can’t thank Auburn enough,” Evans wrote. “This place has allowed me to grow tremendously. I’ve made relationships that will last a lifetime. First I want to thank both staffs for giving me the opportunity to be apart of the Auburn family, I want to thank Coach Harsin for all the life lessons that will stick with me forever and I want to thank Coach [Ike] Hilliard for teaching me so much and helping my game during our short time together. … I’ll never forget all the memories and friends I made along the way.

“I am forever grateful for this opportunity! With all that being said after a lot of thought and prayer I have decided to enter my name in the transfer portal and pursue other opportunities.”

Evans arrived at Auburn as a four-star recruit and the No. 172 player in the nation from the class of 2020, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

Check out the full On3 Transfer Portal Rankings.

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.