Auburn offers James Madison edge transfer Isaac Ukwu
Auburn has extended another offer to a transfer portal player. Around one hour after his Twitter announcement to officially enter the transfer portal, Isaac Ukwu, an edge transfer from James Madison, tweeted an Auburn offer.
The Tigers are in the market for a transfer edge. After Cincinnati linebacker transfer Jaheim Thomas told Auburn Live’s Jeffrey Lee he could play inside linebacker, Auburn is still on the hunt for help at the edge/Jack linebacker position.
Ukwu is an experienced grad transfer with plenty of production and one year of eligibility remaining.
Wherever Ukwu decides to continue his playing career, it will be his seventh collegiate football season. All six of his seasons took place at James Madison. He took a redshirt his freshman season in 2017 and battled injuries off and on.
Ukwu missed the entire 2019 and 2020 seasons with injuries. In 2021 and 2022 he was named an All-Conference performer. He totaled 83 tackles, 27 TFL, 16.5 sacks, 5 PD and 3 FF in the last 2 football seasons for the Dukes.
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.
More on the transfer portal database
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 recruiting cycle after totals of 1,020 in 2019-20 and 1,063 in 2018-19.
