No NCAA ruling in decades has been more impactful on the landscape of college athletics than the addition of the Transfer Portal five years ago, leading to the phrase “I’ve entered the transfer portal” by athletes on social media getting their name out becoming commonplace. It’s really not as mysterious of a place as it may seem.

The act of a player transferring to a new school for a new opportunity is nothing new in college athletics, but the way that it’s being done is. Softball is no exception, seeing some of the game’s biggest stars and brightest names leave for new horizons even in just a few months since the season ended with Oklahoma standing on top for another Sooners national championship. The portal isn’t merely a tool, but a must for college athletic programs for them to build and restore teams on top of the act of high school recruiting. Its reach and application have changed the way coaches think about their rosters and how they can improve from year to year, and those who don’t have a grip on how they can best take advantage of the portal, they’re likely bound to fall behind. And in college softball, where one of the most powerful dynasties ever in the sport’s history is currently reigning supreme over all, that is not what you want to be doing.

Though its frequent mention in college sports media spheres makes it easy to conclude that the NCAA Transfer Portal has been around as an important tool for building teams forever, the portal is actually a fairly new concept. Launched by the NCAA on Oct. 15, 2018, the portal — an application and compliance tool not visible to the public or media — essentially made easier the process of how athletes could opt to leave their schools to potentially seek new opportunities at other places within the NCAA across all three of its divisions.

The first is the winter window, which is open from Dec. 1-15 and often doesn’t see as much action as those dates preceding an upcoming season which happens just weeks later and a faster turnover is required to make transfers work, though moves do happen during this period.

The 45-day window that opens the day after championship selections (a.k.a. the NCAA Tournament bracket) are made, however, is where things amp up and often the most talented names in the portal each year enter as they seek fresh starts, look for greater opportunities, follow a departing coach or leave for a variety of other reasons.

The open dates for which players can enter the portal have one exception regarding postgraduate transfers with remaining eligibility as the NCAA ruled last year that they can enter the portal at any time, provided they adhere to seasonal deadlines for their respective sport.

The most notable other rule to know is probably the one-time transfer rule, allowing athletes who wish to transfer the ability to move schools once for any reason without missing a season. Softball in the NCAA (along with all D-II and D-III sports) has long had that policy, but only in 2021 was the policy extended in D-I to include football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s ice hockey, and baseball, unleashing — particularly in football and basketball — a new era of college athletics in which the offseason courting of players more closely resembles free agency seen in professional sports.

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