NCAA must move the start of the transfer portal in college basketball

College basketball fans are in the midst of the greatest time of the year. The real madness begins during conference tournament week.

Teams are looking to grab that automatic bid with a conference championship victory, while some teams know their only hope of making the Big Dance is to win the conference.

Conference tournaments are the perfect appetizer for the NCAA Tournament. However, nowadays, fans have another thing to worry about during the best time of the year.

The transfer portal has become a very popular subject in all college sports. However, news of players announcing they will be jumping in the portal is already happening.

NEWS: North Dakota guard Treysen Eaglestaff is entering the transfer portal, his agent @GeorgeLangberg of GSL Sports Group tells @On3sports.

The 6-6 junior averaged 18.9 PPG this season. Scored 40 points on Alabama in December and had a 51-point outing against South Dakota… pic.twitter.com/RkE9qFbNqD
— Joe Tipton (@TiptonEdits) March 11, 2025

Listen, we're all for players getting paid. That's something that should have happened a long time ago. However, the transfer portal has become the chaos that the NCAA probably hoped for.

Kids are announcing their intentions to join the portal, and some are even having it announced by an agent.

The college basketball transfer portal opens on March 24th, while March Madness is still going on, which feels kind of gross.

Denver guard Sebastian Akins, the Summit League Freshman of the Year, plans to enter the transfer portal @On3sports is told.

The 6-2 freshman from Concord, NC averaged 12.7 points and 2.7 assists this season.

👉 [READ] https://t.co/STQIdmnVDe pic.twitter.com/VZgUcK5EGH
— Jamie Shaw (@JamieShaw5) March 12, 2025

College athletics have become a minor league system, which is fine. However, it is time to start treating IT more professionally and call the transfer portal what it really is: free agency.

Free agency doesn't begin in any sport until the season is over, and it is time for the NCAA to adopt that same mindset.

Portal talk should wait until after the tournament. Then, we can treat portal moves like the Wild West that it has become.

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