WATCH: Ole Miss transfer target gets chauffeured by Lane Kiffin in a Rolls Royce
Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin has not been shy about making waves the past few years on social media and on Saturday night, he’s making the rounds yet again. This time, it’s because he was chauffeuring a prospect from the transfer portal, Central Florida wide receiver Jaylon Robinson.
Watch the video with Robinson below, as Kiffin makes an appearance as his driver.
Kiffin even noted in ESPN’s spring game coverage on Saturday that Ole Miss needed to recruit prospects from the transfer portal in unconventional ways. Well, chauffeuring prospects around in a Rolls Royce would definitely classify as unconventional. It’s bound to get a lot of buzz on social media as well.
Robinson is on his official visit to Ole Miss this weekend. In the 2018 recruiting class, Robinson was rated as a four-star prospect, according to the On3 Consensus Rankings. Before Central Florida, he started his career with the Oklahoma Sooners. Now, he’s searching for his third collegiate home.
The 5-foot-9, 180-pound junior had the best season of his career in 2020 after sitting out in 2019. He posted 979 yards on 55 catches with four touchdowns. In 2021, he had 18 catches in six games played for 322 yards and two touchdowns. He suffered a knee injury on Sept. 17 against Louisville that kept him on the sideline for five games.
For updates on where all the different college football prospects across America are headed this offseason, keep it locked to the 2022 On3 Transfer Portal Wire.
Transfer portal 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.
On3’s Nikki Chavanelle also contributed to this story.