LSU QB Walker Howard to enter NCAA Transfer Portal
LSU quarterback Walker Howard will enter the NCAA Transfer Portal after just one season in Baton Rouge, sources confirmed with The Bengal Tiger.
Howard signed on with LSU one year ago after a decorated prep career at St. Thomas More in Lafayette, La.
Howard was 2-of-4 for seven yards in the Citrus Bowl win over Purdue to close out the 2022 season.
Senior Jayden Daniels and redshirt freshman Garrett Nussmeier are the top two quarterbacks on the depth chart moving into the offseason. Just a week ago, LSU head coach Brian Kelly said he expected all three returning scholarship quarterbacks to be on the roster in the spring.
“I absolutely 100% believe that all three quarterbacks are going to be with us,” Kelly said. “And all of them we’ve had conversations with and feel that that’s the direction we’re going.”
Coming out of Lafayette (La.) St. Thomas More, Howard was ranked by the On3 Consensus as the No. 6 quarterback in the class and the No. 45 overall prospect in the 2022 recruiting cycle.
LSU will move through the offseason with three quarterbacks on roster in Daniels, Nussmeier and four-star prospect Rickie Collins, who signed with the Tigers in December and enrolls in school this month.
The Transfer Portal Windows
The NCAA Transfer Portal’s newest rules will allow 60 days per year for student-athletes to enter the portal and maintain immediate eligibility for first-time transfers. For fall sports like football, the window will be split into two periods.
The first, a 45-day period, began December 5. A second window will be instituted from May 1-15, giving players an option to enter the transfer portal after spring camp.
The first portal window will close on January 19.
The Transfer Portal Guidelines
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.
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.
