Oregon running back changes mind multiple times on college football future

Oregon running back Sean Dollars entered the NCAA Transfer Portal at 7:25 p.m. ET, On3’s Matt Zenitz reported.

Then, at 7:32 p.m. ET, Dollars withdrew his name from the NCAA Transfer Portal, according to Zenitz. He stayed in the Transfer Portal for seven minutes.

Finally, at 8:02 p.m. ET — 30 minutes after Dollars withdrew his name — he reentered his name in the NCAA Transfer Portal.

Dollars, a 5-foot-10, 171-pound running back just finished up his redshirt sophomore season at Oregon. A native of Santa Ana, California, Dollars attended Mater Dei High School, where he blossomed into a four-star recruit via the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. Dollars was the No. 12 running back in the 2019 class, as well as the No. 21 overall recruit in the state of California.

Dollars appeared four times in his freshman year, 2019, ultimately taking a redshirt season after tallying just seven carries for 81 yards. He played in all seven games in his redshirt freshman year, 2020, but hardly logged more stats — Dollars had just eight carries for 47 yards.

Dollars, who has just 15 carries for 128 yards in a two-year span, suffered a “significant” knee injury in April 2021. The knee injury lingered well into the 2021 season and ultimately resulted in Dollars not appearing for the duration of the year.

For a full list of NCAA Transfer Portal entries, click here.

Transfer Portal background after Dollar’s entry, exit and reentry

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.