The NCAA calls it “the notification-of-transfer period,” when student-athletes officially inform their school, and hence, the NCAA that they are interested in changing schools. We all know it as the Transfer Portal. For Penn State and the rest of college football, the portal officially opens at one minute past midnight this Friday.
Penn State may not be Ground Zero for portal activity, despite the head coaching change that brought in Matt Campbell from Iowa State three weeks ago. In the 80 hours after the Nittany Lions’ season-ending Pinstripe Bowl victory over Clemson, less than 10 Penn State players announced that they are portal bound. Still, activity inside Lasch Building is expected to be among the busiest in all of college football over the next several weeks.
Meanwhile, back in Ames, Iowa State is bracing for a flood of departures and arrivals. A veritable storm of former Cyclones has already announced their intentions to hit the portal. To help handle the onslaught, Iowa State’s new head coach, Campbell’s successor Jimmy Rogers, announced on Tuesday a total of 10 additions to his recruiting staff “to assist in program roster building and logistics.”
Rogers coached at Washington State for one season (2025), before going to Iowa State. Once there, he was The Portal King. And, as Iowa State itself touted on its website on Tuesday, new ISU football GM Ricky Ciccone “assisted Rogers in building a roster last season at Washington State that had 75 newcomers, but still managed to finish the season 7-6 overall and won the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.”
THE PORTAL, FROM CAMPBELL TO NITS: Here’s a quick primer on what the new rules, fewer regulations, expectations, key dates, and dollars and sense of college football’s transfer portal mean to Penn State Football.
PENN STATE PORTAL UPDATES:
• To see which Nittany Lions are staying in 2026, click here.
• To see which Nittany Lions are leaving, click here.
THE PORTAL OPENS at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 2, and closes at 11:59 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 16. That’s 15 days — 360 hours — of frenetic, around-the-clock pronouncement of transfer intentions. Intentions is the word. Players do not have to commit to their new school during that time period.
ONE AND ONLY. Unlike past years, there will not be a spring portal period.
TBH, THE PORTAL HAS ALREADY BEEN OPEN. KINDA. We’ve seen players announcing that they are transferring over the past few weeks. But no matter what they have posted on X or IG, it’s not official until this Friday. And, to be honest — OK, how about “forthcoming”…since honesty and the portal are not always congruent — college football players and their agents have been negotiating with programs for days and weeks. And many of the players do have agents.
DESTINATION UNKNOWN? That’s OK, for the players. They do not have to commit to and sign with their new school by the 16th; they just have to officially file paperwork with their school that they are in the portal — and looking. They can wait days and weeks to decide upon their landing spot after the portal notification period ends.
RETURN TO SENDER? Once a player submits paperwork for the portal, his scholarship can be immediately cancelled at his original school, his locker cleaned out and his roster spot vacated. There are also potential academic/eligibility hurdles.
HOW DOES A PLAYER ENTER THE PORTAL? For Penn State football, a player informs the school’s compliance office — at PSU, comprised of six staffers, headed by senior associate AD for compliance Matt Jakoubek, who was previously at LSU — of his desire to enter the portal. The office has two business days to add the player’s name to the NCAA’s online database, or portal. Once in the database, players can be contacted by other schools, but…not if they don’t want to be:
DESTINATION KNOWN, i.e., DO NOT CONTACT. Many transfer deals are already set, or at least in motion. Especially the bigger ones. In these cases, and others, players are permitted to place a “do not contact” tag in the NCAA transfer portal, which means coaches and other programs are blocked from initiating contact with the players.
THERE IS NO LIMIT to the number of players a school can take from the transfer portal. The 75 Rogers took in at Washington State this past season is an extreme. When Curt Cignetti arrived at Indiana prior to the 2024 season, 38 Indiana players transferred out and Cignetti welcomed in 31 transfers — including 21 players from Group of 5 schools, with 13 from his old school, James Madison.
WHAT ABOUT THE CFP TEAMS? The rules remain the same for all teams still participating in bowl games and the College Football Playoff — with one exception. That would be only the two teams playing in the CFP title game on Jan. 19. They get an extra five days to hit the portal, beginning on Jan. 20.
THE CAMPBELL BRAINTRUST. These are the guys who are working on the portal evaluations and deals, augmented by prior staff hold-overs like Kenny Sanders and Alan Zeimaitis. Within four days of being hired, Campbell brought in a quartet of front office execs to help run the business, recruiting and logistics of Penn State Football. Three were with Campbell at Iowa State, in leadership positions: GM Derek Hoodjer, director of player personnel Trent Slattenow and football chief of staff Skip Brabenec. They’re joined by assistant GM Jack Griffith, who spent the last three years at the University of Cincinnati.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Campbell will need a big bankroll if he is to operate freely in the portal. According to Penn State alum and veteran reporter Matt Fortuna, who operates the excellent college football insider Substack, “The Inside Zone,” Penn State “has committed to giving Campbell roughly $30 million in NIL support.” That’s as much as five times what Campbell had at Iowa State; on his first day in the job at PSU, Campbell told local media that Iowa State had the lowest NIL budget in the Power Four.
MULTIPLE BUCKETS: All of that money is not coming directly from Penn State. According to the new NCAA rules after the House settlement, Penn State’s athletic department has $20.5 million annually (with a 4% increase next year) to straight-out pay its athletes. PSU Football gets a yeoman’s share of that money to pay its players. Even if Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft designates $17 million to go to football, that additional $13 million to get to $30mil — called “over-the-cap” money — must come from somewhere. The sources:
Third-party NIL deals, brokered through collectives, is a big bucket. Penn State’s collective of choice is Happy Valley United. When putting together deals to keep current players (like recently re-committed O-line stud Cooper Cousins) or sign portal stars (like Iowa State QB Rocco Becht), Campbell’s team offers a full deal that includes a paycheck from Penn State, plus the promise of NIL deals and, at times, sponsor money.
Here’s how that works: Sponsorship and media partners like Playfly, which markets the multimedia and sponsorships rights for Penn State athletics, also searches out and secures deals for PSU athletes. Altogether, that is part of a package that is offered to players coming in from the portal — or who are contemplating heading out. Along the way, the newly-created College Sports Commissions must approve NIL deals over a certain dollar figure. That’s if the system works. Which many (most?) say does not.
OH, YEAH. IT’S COLLEGE. WHAT ABOUT CLASSES? As I wrote back in November, ostensibly, the transfer-portaling student-athletes will be looking to matriculate at The Pennsylvania State University for the academic experience. Either way, timing-wise, Penn State is at a disadvantage. It’s a process:
• Transfers must apply.
• Have their transcripts reviewed by Penn State academic officials.
• Be deemed eligible to transfer.
• Then be admitted.
It’s a process that can normally take weeks, even months. The portal truncates that process considerably. This is where being on the semester system hurts PSU football.
University Park spring semester 2026 classes start Monday, Jan. 12 and the official late drop is Friday, Jan. 16. There’s some latitude, athletes or not, for students to add a class in Week 2. By the start of Week 3, on Jan. 26, they’re pretty much at Penn State. Or not. At least until May.
