Former Alabama cornerback commits to SEC rival school

A former Alabama cornerback entered the transfer portal during the season, and has finally announced he has committed to a rival SEC school. Marcus Banks shared on his social media Monday that he was now joining the Mississippi State Bulldogs.

Done deal 🐶 pic.twitter.com/H6IrNxQJYr

— Marcus Banks (@MarcusBanks1k) December 21, 2021

Alabama cornerback commits to rival

Banks, a former four-star recruit, entered the transfer portal earlier this season. Head coach Nick Saban addressed the midseason loss of Marcus Banks at the time, weighing in on the existence of the transfer portal.

“Look, our goal and aspiration when we recruit every player here [is] to help them be successful personally, academically, athletically and we want to continue to try to do that everywhere we can with every player,” Saban said, via AL.com’s Mike Rodak. “But the circumstances that we have now where players can decide to do, basically, leave the team and go someplace else, we have to adapt to that.”

Now, Banks has finally found his new home at Mississippi 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.