LSU safety Michael Daugherty intends to enter the NCAA transfer portal, he announced via Twitter on Saturday afternoon. He has not been in Baton Rouge too long, being a member of the 2023 recruiting class for head coach Brian Kelly.
Daugherty was expected to play nickel during his time with the Tigers. He was an early enrollee in the program after signing in December. However, there will be an early exit for Daugherty as the Peach State native will look for a new home to play college football.
Daugherty played high school football at Loganville (GA) Grayson, where he was a NUMBER-star prospect. He was the No. 573 overall recruit in the 2023 cycle, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.
The NCAA Transfer Portal, which covers every NCAA sport at Division I, II, and III levels, is a private database containing 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 appears 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 must no longer 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 standard database, sortable by various topics, including (of course) sports and names. A player’s 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.
