The NCAA has instructed college football programs to remove the names of any student-athletes who entered the transfer portal since the new portal windows went into effect on Aug. 31, the NCAA confirmed to ESPN on Wednesday.
The schools were also told not to contact any student-athletes who entered the portal during that time frame.
The NCAA Division I board of directors on Aug. 31 voted to approve 60 days throughout the calendar year during which student-athletes can enter the transfer portal, a change that went into effect for the 2022-23 season. Football players will be allowed to enter the portal for 45 days beginning the day after the College Football Playoff field is announced, and also from May 1 to May 15.
Those dates were put into place and effective immediately, but athletes were still entering the portal, a process that requires the school's compliance office to officially enter the player's name into the NCAA transfer portal.
An NCAA spokesperson clarified that student-athletes are required to enter the portal during the transfer windows, but are not required to actually transfer during that window. Once they are permissibly entered into the portal, they can start talking to coaches at other schools and then transfer at any time.
According to the spokesperson, if a head coach is fired midseason, student-athletes on that team have an immediate 30-day period during which they can be permissibly entered into the portal regardless of their sport's transfer window.
Among the FBS scholarship players who entered the portal in the past two weeks were Oklahoma linebacker Joseph Wete, whose name has since been removed, Clemson linebacker Sergio Allen and Ole Miss wide receiver Dannis Jackson, as well as others.
