JJ Evans becomes fourth Auburn receiver to enter NCAA Transfer Portal following Bryan Harsin firing

Another Auburn wide receiver has entered the transfer portal. J.J. Evans officially hit the portal Tuesday, On3’s Matt Zenitz has learned.

Evans previously announced his intention to transfer Sept. 7 and didn’t see the field during his time on The Plains. He’s a former four-star recruit and was the No. 171 player in the nation from the class of 2020, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

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Evans is the fourth Auburn receiver to enter the portal Tuesday. He joins Ze’Vian Capers, Tar’Varish Dawson and Landen King officially entered the portal after previously announcing their intentions to do so. They originally had to wait until Dec. 5 to enter, according to new NCAA rules, but they can enter immediately now that Auburn decided to make a coaching change.

Check out the On3 Transfer Portal Rankings.

Auburn announced the decision to part ways with Harsin on Monday following two years with the program. The Tigers are 3-5 this season and will now move forward with Carnell “Cadillac” Williams as their interim head coach.

Transfer portal background information

The NCAA Transfer Portal, which covers every NCAA sport at the Division I, II and III levels, is a private database with names of student-athletes who wish to transfer. It is not accessible to the public.

The process of entering the portal is done through a school’s compliance office. Once a player provides written notification of an intent to transfer, the office enters the player’s name in the database and everything is off and running. The compliance office has 48 hours to comply with the player’s request and that request cannot be refused.

Once a player’s name shows up in the portal, other schools can contact the player. Players can change their minds at any point and withdraw from the portal. However, once a player enters the portal, the current scholarship no longer has to be honored. In other words, if a player enters the portal but decides to stay, the school is not obligated to provide a scholarship anymore.

The database is a normal database, sortable by a variety of topics, including (of course) sport and name. A player’s individual entry includes basic details such as contact info, whether the player was on scholarship and whether the player is transferring as a graduate student.

A player can ask that a “do not contact” tag be placed on the report. In those instances, the players don’t want to be  contacted by schools unless they’ve initiated the communication.

The portal has been around since Oct. 15, 2018 and the new calendar cycle within the portal begins each August. For example, the 2021-22 cycle started Aug. 1. During the 2020-21 cycle, 2,626 FBS football players entered the transfer portal (including walk-ons). That comes after 1,681 entered during the 2019-20 cycle and 1,709 during the abbreviated 2018-19 cycle. In comparison, 1,833 Division I basketball players entered the portal during the 2020-21 cycle after totals of 1,020 in 2019-20 and 1,063 in 2018-19.