BREAKING: Dacari Collins commits to NC State
NC State picked up a commitment from former Clemson wide receiver Dacari Collins Saturday night, adding a playmaking pass catcher to its 2023 roster. He officially visited the Wolfpack last weekend and made his decision official on Twitter.
Collins kept his recruitment quiet, but he made the official trip to Raleigh last weekend. After signing with the Tigers in the 2021 class, the 6-foot-4, 210-pound Collins caught 17 passes for 229 yards over 2 seasons. He is NC State’s first transfer portal commitment of the 2023 cycle.
Coming out of Atlanta’s Westlake High, he led Clemson in catches and receiving yards in 3 games late in the 2021 season, including the bowl win over Iowa State and rivalry showdown with South Carolina. He finished his true freshman year with 16 receptions for 221 yards.
Collins caught an 8-yard pass in an early-season win over Furman before deciding to leave the team three games into the year and enter the transfer portal upon year’s completion.
As a recruit, the On3 Consensus rated Collins the No. 218 prospect in the nation, the No. 35 receiver in the country and the No. 18 player in Georgia.
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.
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.
