The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Oversight Committee recommended shortening the transfer portal period from 45 days to 30 days in a May report.
Additionally, under the new recommendations, college basketball's transfer portal would open the day after the conclusion of the second round of the NCAA Tournament, a week later than the current schedule of the day after Selection Sunday.
The proposal has been approved by the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) and will be considered by the Division I Council in June. If approved, the changes would take effect for the 2024-25 competitive calendar.
If the committee's recommendations are accepted as expected, it will mark the fourth change to the college basketball calendar since October 2023. First, the NCAA shortened the portal period for all college sports from 60 days to 45 days. Then, in January, the Board of Supervisors adopted legislation to reduce the number of live recruiting periods from May through July. Many coaches welcomed these changes to combat the never-ending nature of modern recruiting.
More recently, in April, the Division I Council adopted a rule that graduate transfer students, who previously had no deadline to enter the portal and had until August of last offseason to do so, must adhere to the deadline for the undergraduate portal.
All of these changes and the committee's latest proposal aim to create stronger guidelines amid an ever-changing college landscape. Delaying the portal entry date by a week would reduce the amount of transfer portal recruiting that takes place during the NCAA Tournament. Coaches from the past two Final Fours, including Connecticut's Dan Hurley, have lamented hosting transfer portal visits and making recruiting calls while the season is still ongoing. The committee said the new proposal would result in 91 percent of teams finishing their seasons by the day after the second round of March Madness.
The 30-day grace period would also speed up the decision-making timeline for players considering moving. Under the current calendar, players have until 11:59 p.m. on May 1 to declare their intent to enter the portal, but this proposal would move that deadline up by a few days.
Beyond the transfer portal, the committee also recommended that all six countable coaches on a college staff be allowed to recruit off-campus. Last offseason, the NCAA adopted a rule allowing college staffs to have six countable coaches instead of the previous limit of four. This led to a surge in recruiting across the industry and was seen as a great way to improve the college coaching pipeline. This latest proposal would do the same, allowing coaches who are currently limited to on-campus development to hone their recruiting chops and enrich their skill sets. Under the new recommendation, head coaches would still be responsible for choosing which four of the six countable coaches to send on the road on any given day, but those four could change from day to day, giving younger coaches new opportunities.
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