Karl van Gelder
Staff Writer
The transfer portal’s sweeping change on college athletics have increased mobility over the last half decade and led to new opportunities for some student-athletes, but not every athlete gets the opportunity to continue their career once entering the portal.
The current era of the portal began during the 2019-20 academic year where some used the new invention, but following the COVID-19 pandemic the use of the portal exploded with the added eligibility awarded to every athlete – changing the entire NCAA landscape.
Last academic year, the 2024-25 academic year, 15,487 student-athletes entered the transfer portal in Division II. According to the NCAA, there were 141,067 student-athletes participating in DII championship sports in the 2024-25 academic year, meaning that just below 11% of athletes in Division II entered the portal.
This is a stark difference from the 2019-20 the first full academic year with the transfer portal in place as it broke onto the scene in October of 2018. In that 2019-20 year, the percentage of athletes in the portal increased 2,188.1% from the year prior with 6,883 entrants. For further context, in 2018-19 there were just 293 entrants into the portal.
“In my time as an athlete compared to now being in compliance, I feel like transferring was such a taboo idea,” assistant athletics director for compliance at Florida Southern and two-time Division II All-American, Bethany Schner said. “You really only transferred if it was like extreme circumstances … during my entire four years [at FSC], we had one person transfer and it was like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe that, this is crazy.”
FSC ranks among the top schools in Division II in not only current success, but especially historical success with 30 team national championships and over 400 All-American athletes. In 2024-25 FSC had a total of 54 athletes enter the portal with 25 matriculating, meaning they signed with another school, after entering the portal and 27 remaining active in the portal, meaning they did not land at a school or return to their previous school after entering the portal.
In spite of what many fans, and student-athletes, believe about the portal 46.2% of FSC portal entrants matriculating is much higher than the overall Division II average. Of Division II student-athletes that entered the portal in the 2024-25 academic year, 37.05% of those athletes matriculated to Division I, II or III.
“A lot of times we’re seeing that they’re entering the transfer portal and they’re not actually going anywhere,” Schner said. “I think if the NCAA released a lot more of this… it would give more students a better reality of what’s going on in the transfer portal.”
Last year this continued to remain true, following the trends of the last half decade with 53.3% of athletes who entered the portal remained active in the portal. These percentages change based upon division of play with over 60% of Division I student-athletes matriculating and below 25% of Division III student-athletes matriculating. Despite the percentage of active portal entrants, the rate of matriculation has meaningfully increased following the three-year stretch from 2019-20 to 2021-22. Since that stretch undergraduate student-athletes at both the Division I and II levels have matriculated on average at a 5% or higher rate than any year from the 2019-20 to 2021-22 range, showing an improved execution of the intended use of the portal.
In spite of many similarities in rate of matriculation across gender, there are considerable differences in student-athlete movement based upon gender. Specifically, male athletes tend to matriculate outside of their division at a slightly higher rate than their female counterparts and enter the portal at a higher rate.
Firstly, among Division II male student-athlete transfers in 2024-25, 28.58% of them matriculated to the Division I level compared to 22.44% of female Division II student-athletes. On average Division II male student-athletes moved up to Division I at a 3.47% higher rate. Secondly, male student-athletes in the portal far outnumbers the number of female student-athletes. Of Division II athletes that matriculated 66.7% of matriculated athletes were male.
“[Student-Athletes in] basketball, football and baseball a lot of times those kids are trying to play beyond college,” Schner said in regards to increased movement of male athletes in the portal. Schner continued saying, “… now that schools are offering money, it’s basically a lot of times like ‘Where am I gonna get the most money?’”
The portal continues to be used to contribute to the upward mobility of student-athletes whether athletically, academically or professionally. However, for many it has also hindered such growth. As the portal’s place in the NCAA continues to grow, based upon the trends of matriculation within, so will the benefits of using such a tool.
