The NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Oversight Committee recommended reducing the transfer portal window from 45 days to 30, according to the committee’s May report.
Additionally, under the new recommendation, the college basketball transfer portal would open the day after the end of the second round of the NCAA Tournament, a week later than it currently does, the day after Selection Sunday.
The proposal, which was endorsed by the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NKeynoteUSA), now goes to the Division I Council for consideration in June. If approved, the change would take effect for the 2024-25 sports calendar.
If the committee’s recommendation is accepted, as expected, it would mark the fourth change to the college basketball calendar since October 2023. First, the NCAA reduced the portal window for all college sports from 60 days to 45. Then, in In January, the oversight committee adopted legislation reducing the number of live recruiting periods from May to July. Many coaches celebrated those changes, which countered the never-ending nature of modern recruiting.
Most recently, in April, the Division I Council adopted rules stating that graduate transfers (who previously had no deadline to enter the portal and who entered last August during the offseason) had to meet the deadlines undergraduate portal limit.
All of those changes, as well as the committee’s latest proposal, seek to create stronger guidelines amid an ever-changing university landscape. Delaying the portal entry date by one week would reduce the amount of transfer portal recruiting that occurs during the NCAA Tournament. Coaches in each of the last two Final Fours, including Connecticut’s Dan Hurley, have lamented receiving transfer portal visits and making recruiting calls with their seasons still ongoing. The committee said that under its new proposal, 91 percent of teams will have concluded their seasons the day after the second round of March Madness.
The 30-day window would also speed up the decision-making timeline for players contemplating transferring. According to the current calendar, players had until 11:59 p.m. on May 1 to declare their intention to enter the portal; This proposal would advance that deadline by several days.
Beyond the transfer portal, the committee also recommended that the university’s six staff accounting coaches be allowed to recruit off-campus. Last offseason, the NCAA adopted rules allowing college staffs to have six countable coaches, instead of the previous limit of four. That led to an industry-wide hiring spree, which was seen as an important way to improve the college coaching pipeline. This latest proposal would do the same, allowing coaches currently restricted to on-campus development to work on their recruiting skills and round out their skills. Under the new recommendation, head coaches would still be responsible for selecting which of their six accounting coaches can hit the road on a given day, but those four could vary from day to day, providing new opportunities for young coaches.
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