Should you enter transfer portal? What all athletes need to know

We tend to think of the transfer portal, at least as outside observers, in terms of opportunistic players.

Those are the ones who seek a “better” situation in terms of playing time or, at the upper echelon of Division I sports, a chance to get paid.  

The reality, says Linda Martindale, a mental fitness coach for high school and college athletes, is many of them are pushed into the portal.

“A coach says, ‘You’re not gonna play here, so find somewhere else to play,’ ” Martindale, who coaches high school basketball in the Boston area, told USA TODAY Sports last month. ‘It happens all the time.

‘The transfer portal is not full of selfish athletes who want to find something better or who aren’t getting to play, which I think some people think. It’s probably a 50-50. You know, you’ve been over-recruited. You’re not as good as, maybe, the coach thought you were gonna be. That kind of thing.’

Jan. 2 marked the start of the NCAA’s transfer portal window for football that runs through Jan. 16. Longer windows start for basketball in March and continue throughout the spring and summer for other sports.

The process involves thousands of kids every year. Top athletes are lured by schools through payments they receive from Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deals.

“I had a Power Four basketball GM tell me straight up, ‘We don’t recruit anymore. We acquire,’ ” says Brian Cruver, co-founder and CEO of Scorability, a database that stores player information that coaches and athletes use as a recruiting tool. “ ‘We look at how much money we have to spend and we go spend it. And if we have to spend more on this kid, it’s less we have available to spend on this other kid.’ It’s basically just dealing with an amount of money and what can you buy with it?”

Cruver, though, says players seeking large sums of NIL money make up a small fraction of college athletes on NCAA, NAIA or junior college teams. The rest are looking for help to find the right spot, investing time and money, and anguish, to do so.

What do we need to know if our kids are thinking of entering the transfer portal? Here are four questions athletes and parents can ask themselves, gleaned from consultation with experts:

What do you really know – or maybe not know – about the transfer portal?

The system allows athletes to transfer to another school and be eligible to play the next season, sometimes earlier.

What I learned from listening to coaches at on-campus baseball prospect camps (Division I, II and III) with my son, now a high school senior, is you’re not guaranteed to be picked up by another school when you enter the transfer portal.

Perhaps there’s a sounder strategy, for any level.

“We’ve had some people transfer to programs where they want to play,” North Carolina women’s lacrosse coach Jenny Levy told Martindale on Martindale’s ‘Game Changers’ podcast in 2024. “They’re usually kids that aren’t getting what they want on the field. Sometimes they say, ‘Jenny, I’m going to graduate early, and I’m going to go somewhere where I can play.’

“I’m like, ‘Great, let me help you.’ I have no problem with that. I’m very supportive of those players all the time. … But if you’re leaving just because you’re not getting what you want, don’t have the patience to actually develop yourself, and you just want a CliffsNotes version to start, and you want to go top 10 to top 10, then I think that’s bad parenting, personally.

“If you’re gonna go to a program that’s maybe not in the top 10, so maybe you finish your degree at the school where you are and you’ve got eligibility left and you want to go have a different experience and maybe play for a program that you can get on the field with, I think that’s great. Good for those guys.”

No one comes to sit on the bench, but what are you getting out of being on the team?

If you are thinking about entering the portal, consider talking to your college coach first.   

Do they support your decision? Will your school take you back if you don’t land somewhere else? That conversation might help you better realize your value to them.

“I think part of my job is managing disappointment,” Levy told Martindale. “And you have to understand that no one came to sit on the bench … You have to be aware that while you’re still pushing and prodding your highest performers, there’s a whole group of players that are human, and they want to achieve, and they want to feel valued. And so we talk a lot about that.

“Sometimes the kid’s like, ‘I’m just not better than the player in front of me.’ And that’s OK. What they’re doing takes courage. It takes commitment and passion. And in four years, when they get out of our program, they have learned a whole set of skills, intangible skills that they will take with them for their lives. And so we really start to talk about what are you learning as a human? What are you taking with you?”

Ray Priore, who spent 38 years as either a head or assistant football coach at the University of Pennsylvania before stepping down in November, admits he was one of the lucky ones among the high-profile sports. He didn’t deal with NIL offers and instead sold the value of an Ivy League education and the career and financial opportunities it brought.

Priore called the Ivy League experience “NIL for life.” Still, he told USA TODAY Sports in November, Penn has lost a player or two every year since the transfer portal opened in 2018. One of them was running back Malachi Hosley, the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year in 2024. He left for Georgia Tech and became the nationally ranked FBS team’s second leading rusher in 2025.

Priore says he was told Hosley received a “significant” NIL deal.

“I’m happy for him because I think he’s at a level and perhaps the NIL situation is helping his family,” Priore said. “And I think that that’s a good thing. Hurtful, from the standpoint it hurts us. Because now you lose that person.”

“We really try to create a transformational experience here,” says Levy, who has won four national titles at North Carolina. “Lacrosse is not a sport that they’re going to go pro and make a living off of just being a lacrosse player. You’re going to get a job.

“You’re going to have different types of responsibilities outside of the sport after you graduate. And so for us, obviously we want to (position) the team every year to win a conference and NCAA championship, but the culture piece is also very high.

“And that includes team building, it includes career networking and development. So it includes a lot of different things that are addressing developing the whole human.”

I was a rower at a top collegiate program who was often left out of my school’s varsity boats. But I still carry skills learned from the sport – many of them in practice – such as coordinating with others and persevering through difficult tasks. I stuck with the team for three years and stepped away from it for a more “normal” student life my senior year.

“I think we have the greatest classroom in the world,” Priore said in November, pointing out the window of his office at Penn’s Franklin Field. “I don’t care what the venue is.

“I think that’s where maybe parents sometimes miss it. Why is a kid playing? My niece was a good high school soccer player. But my younger brother, at the same time, thought she was like Mia Hamm. She was a scholarship level but she wasn’t going to the Olympics. She was (on) every travel team, elite squad. …. And it’s like, parents, just let the kid enjoy it.”

Is the grass really greener somewhere else?

Parents tell kids they should be playing more on their team. In the case of Howard men’s basketball coach Kenny Blakeney, they request floor seats from him in return for their son’s commitment.

We can be wiser and sounder with our actions and advice. Martindale, the high school and mental fitness coach who also played D-I basketball, has a son who transferred twice as a Division I college basketball player and now plays professionally in Europe.

Over the years, she has come up with four criteria for good coaches: Know you, connect with you, prepare you for failure, believe in you.

If your coach embodies these qualities in their relationship with you, is it worth leaving?

“It’s not soft and fluffy,” Martindale says. “We’re not suggesting that everyone sings songs after a game around a campfire. We know it’s sports, we know it’s competitive, we know it’s aggressive. But joy comes from preparation, from knowing that you’ve given everything you have, of competing, of showing up … all the things that you’re doing, and you’re not giving yourself any credit for.’

Which situation best helps your end game?

Steve Alford won a national championship playing for Bobby Knight and has coached a number of teams into the NCAA tournament over 30-plus seasons as a Division I men’s basketball head coach.

Like a number of his veteran peers, two of whom (Nick Saban, Jay Wright) have gotten out of NCAA coaching, Alford has publicly expressed frustration with the current state of college sports.

“Five years ago, I wasn’t on conversations (with players), saying, ‘How much you want to be paid?’ ” Alford, who now coaches Nevada, said last March. “Never thought that would happen in college basketball. I don’t believe student-athletes shouldn’t be paid. But the way it is now is utterly ridiculous. And it’s changed our game. And so you gotta adapt. Before every game, me and the opposing coach are gonna talk about portal issues. And, you know, where’s academics at? … ”

“It used to be, ‘Hey, what’s my degree gonna look like? What’s your facilities look like? What’s your relationship with the team look like? Are you there for all practices? Are you a coach that dives into relationships, and you’re gonna care for my child?’ You might as well throw all that stuff out, ’cause the only question they’re concerned about is what they’re getting paid in the portal. …

“Most of them are getting what they’re getting before they ever produce. You should have to produce, then you receive. It’s a bad lesson, and we shouldn’t be sending kids off to teach them bad models for when they’re 25 and 26.”

During the press conference, Alford alluded to five of his players at the time whose NIL deals were set to expire in the next two months. He openly asked the question of what happens next.

“Are they gonna be able to handle the real world?” he said.

It’s a question any kid, athlete or not, can try and answer with a parent when considering a potential college.

Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His Coach Steve column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.