Gamecocks adding former top 50 prospect to roster
DeAngelo Gibbs has joined the South Carolina Gamecocks football team, the school announced via social media on Wednesday.
The former Tennessee Volunteer arrived at the program as a walk-on, according to GamecockCentral.com sources. He originally entered the NCAA transfer portal back in May.
Gibbs is a formerly highly-ranked national prospect in the 2017 recruiting class. He was ranked as a wide receiver by the On3 Consensus as the nation’s number 42 overall prospect, the sixth best at his position in the country, and the fifth-best player in the state of Georgia.
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The Grayson High product originally signed with the University of Georgia, where he spent two seasons in 2017 and 2018. In Athens, Gibbs registered 10 tackles and played in a total of 13 contests.
From there, Gibbs moved to Knoxville as a transfer, redshirting in 2019 while serving as a member of the Vols’ scout team. He practiced with the Vols as both a defensive back and wide receiver. He sat out the 2020 season to focus on academics at Tennessee, then was not listed on the Vols’ roster for either of the 2021 and 2022 seasons.
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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 must be honored. In other words, if a player enters the portal but decides to stay, the school is no longer obligated to provide a scholarship.
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.
