EUGENE — Oregon athletics supports players having the freedom of movement afforded to them by the transfer portal and one-time transfer rule, but would also like to see the implementation of transfer windows to confine player movement to certain periods of the year.
Transfer windows could be coming to college sports as soon as the upcoming season, with the NCAA Division I Transformation Committee recommending to the Division I Board of Directors on Thursday for “additional accountability for schools that receive transfer student-athletes and provide student-athletes with a window of time to enter the transfer portal each year in order to be eligible to compete in the following year.”
Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens doesn’t have an exact number of transfer windows or duration he’d like to see them last, but does think there needs to be more structure than there is currently, with college athletes able to enter and exit the portal at any time with only a May 1 entry deadline for eligibility to compete in fall and winter sports.
“I do think being able to do it 24/7/365 has its challenges; so I do like the idea of basically at the conclusion of a season of having a several week window to be able to explore that and have the opportunity to go there,” Mullens said. “How many of those, I don’t really know. I haven’t given it that much thought but I think you should have it multiple times in an academic year and it should start at the conclusion of a season and how many weeks that’s open, it should be multiple weeks. How many that is, I think that’s worthy of continued debate.”
Mullens told the University of Oregon’s board of trustees last month that as of May 16 there were 66 UO athletes who entered the portal in 2021-22 — several more have entered over the month since the conclusion of spring sports seasons. That was down from 81 in 2020-21 but up from 40 in 2019-20 and 55 in 2018-19.
As of a month ago, there were 39 Pac-12 men’s basketball players who entered the portal in 2021-22 and 49 women’s basketball players from the conference entered the portal, Mullens said.
“The majority of it is around role and immediacy of role,” he said.
Four UO men’s basketball players and five UO women’s basketball players transferred since the end of last season. Oregon men’s basketball added two transfers and the women added one this offseason.
Oregon football had 16 scholarship players either transfer or leave the program since the start of last season and added nine this offseason, not including several preferred walk-ons not on scholarship.
Ducks coach Dan Lanning also didn’t have a specific preference for the number of transfer windows, but feels adding them will help teams.
“I do think there needs to be some restrictions; it needs to make sense so teams know who they’re going into camp with, who’s on their roster and who’s going to be playing for them,” Lanning said. “But I think the student-athlete deserves a little bit — they have rights as well and they deserve those. Whatever’s advantageous for teams and players makes sense to me.”
