Gators OL Richie Leonard to enter transfer portal
One of the Gators’ starting offensive linemen for the 2023 season is heading elsewhere.
Richie Leonard, who started all 12 games at left guard, has announced he is entering the NCAA Transfer Portal. He just finished up his redshirt-junior season and logged a team-high 755 snaps.
During the 2022 season, Leonard made one start and appeared in 12 games for the Gators. The year prior, he started in one of the eight games appeared in.
A product of Cocoa (Fla.) High, the 6-foot-2, 310-pound Leonard was 3-star prospect and the 42nd-ranked interior offensive lineman in the 2020 class. That is according to the On3 Industry Ranking.
“I would like to thank the University of Florida for my time there. Glad I can say I am an alumnus of this great institution. With that being said, I am entering my name in the transfer portal as a grad transfer,” Leonard posted on social media.
Leonard leaves the Gators’ program as a grad transfer with a bachelor’s degree in Media and Society.
Transfer portal background information
The NCAA Transfer Portal 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.
He currently does not have an On3 NIL Valuation publicly listed. The On3 NIL Valuation is the industry’s leading index that sets high school and college athletes’ projected annual value (PAV). The NIL valuation does not act as a tracker of the value of NIL deals an athlete has completed to date. It rather signifies an athlete’s value at a certain moment in time.
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