Providence transfer Will McNair Jr. commits to Kansas State
Will McNair Jr. spent just a couple of months in Providence before deciding it wasn’t the place for him. The 6-foot-11, 265-pound big man re-entered the transfer on September 5th and will now call Kansas State home.
McNair was with the Friars team during their foreign tour to Spain last month. In three games, the Philadelphia native averaged 9.3 points and 8 rebounds, the most in his collegiate career.
Friartown wasn’t McNair’s first stop. He began his college career at New Mexico State, spending three seasons there before entering the transfer portal and landing at Mississippi State, following his head coach Chris Jans.
In May, the big man entered the transfer portal as a graduate transfer, making him immediately eligible. In June, McNair committed to the Friars and by July, he’d enrolled at the school.
Flashforward a couple of months and McNair is shipping off to play in the Big 12 for head coach Jerome Tang and the Kansas State Wildcats.
McNair is headed to Kansas State, 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.