PITTSBURGH — The NCAA made a change to the way that the recruiting process works for college transfers starting this season, and one of the big parts of it has finally come on line.
The NCAA transfer portal now allows all teams equal access to information when a student-athlete informs his or her previous team the he or she is seeking a transfer.
There’s already one Pitt player on the list, as tight end Tyler Sear announced during Pitt’s off week that he will seek a transfer after stepping away from the team for personal reasons.
Sear is one of over 50 football players that have already announced their intention to transfer, the most notable of which is probably Clemson quarterback Kelly Bryant, who announced earlier this season that he’d utilize another part of the rules changes to take a redshirt season in 2018.
Players can now play in up to four games and still take a redshirt, so a player like Bryant, who had never used his redshirt season, was able to extend his career by deciding to transfer after he was passed on the depth chart by freshman quarterback Trevor Lawrence.
But Narduzzi said that there are too many players on the list that are missing out on a season of eligibility.
“It’s almost too much from what I hear from the recruiting office,” he said. “It’s probably already three pages by now. I think people are using it the wrong way. … There’s some guys that have redshirted the year before. They’ve already redshirted. They’ve played four games and they think they can do it again. You’re not going to get the year back. If you’ve already redshirted, just continue to play the rest of the season. What are you doing? That’s the way I look at it.”
Narduzzi’s message doesn’t directly apply to Sear, the only Pitt player to declare his intention to transfer so far this season. But Sear will miss the rest of this season playing with Pitt in addition to sitting out the 2019 at whichever school he transfers to, if it’s another Division I school. He played in six games for the Panthers this season.
Narduzzi said he hasn’t looked at the transfer list himself list, saying that’s something for the offseason. The list is not being made available to the public.
