LOOK: Zion Childress announces commitment to Kentucky
The Kentucky Wildcats football program has landed defensive back Zion Childress from out of the transfer portal. The five foot 10 safety leaves the Texas State Bobcats program to join the Wildcats in the SEC east. Childress made the announcement from his social media account with this post.
After entering the transfer portal, Childress visited Kentucky and the Washington Huskies. On3s Recruiting prediction machine had the Wildcats and Huskies as his two most likely landing places, with Kentucky as the overwhelming favorite.
Childress did not start off his collegiate career in the defensive backfield. The 2020 recruiting class prospect started as a wide receiver and transitioned to safety once he was at Texas State. According to On3’s Recruiting Database, Childress was a three-star prospect from the state of Texas. He was ranked 230 out of all possible receivers and 194 coming out of Texas.
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.