Tackling a growing number of football prospects

Just like when the Badgers hit the gridiron, processing prospective student-athletes through the transfer portal takes coordination and adherence to a carefully crafted playbook. Even with a playbook, though, what happens on the field can require quick adjustments. That’s what DEM team members who admit these student-athletes and review their transfer credit and academic eligibility experienced in January. This year, the NCAA transfer portal window shifted from its usual one-month (early December to early January) timeframe. Instead, it opened on January 2 and closed on January 16. The NCAA also removed the typical May transfer portal window for football student-athletes. A shorter transfer portal window has its own challenges; making it tougher was the sharp increase in the number of prospects considering UW–Madison as their next home. For the Spring 2024 term, DEM processed 14 football prospects, 10 of whom matriculated. A year later, the number of prospects more than doubled to 29, 16 of whom matriculated. For Spring 2026, the division processed 39 prospects, 30 of whom matriculated. These numbers do not include graduate and special students as prospect review is not necessary for those populations; this count also does not reflect the 10 prospective student-athletes from other fall sports reviewed in late November and December. Despite the significant workload increase, the RO’s Credit Evaluation Services and Academic/Athletic Eligibility teams were able to turn around each request and provide Athletics with eligibility outcomes on average within half a day. “I have been working in the transfer student athlete space since my time on the Credit Evaluation Services team, and it’s hard to capture how different the volume, pressure and processing have become in a few short years,” says academic athletic eligibility specialist Anna Dunn. “It’s both exciting and daunting, but the silver lining is knowing I have great colleagues to rely on in Admissions, the RO and Athletics!” Thanks to the typical excellent coordination across DEM and Athletics, the roster will be well-stacked in 2026.

Behind the scenes: The RO’s role

The process begins with Athletics submitting the prospective student-athletes’ high school and previous institutional transcripts, as well as a profile page. The Academic Athletic Eligibility team of Anna Dunn and Jonny Khammanivong creates a prospect record in the Student Information System (SIS) and manually enters each course the prospects took at their previous institution(s). From there, Credit Evaluation Services reviews each course and determines how it should be articulated to UW–Madison’s curriculum, using guidelines developed by departments and schools/colleges, before entering the transfer credit. When additional course details are needed, CES facilitates collecting syllabi, routing them to the appropriate departments for review, and updating the student’s prospect record based on the outcome. The ball is then handed back to the AAES team, at which point Anna and Jonny create the individual eligibility spreadsheets that are used to determine how transfer credits apply to a major, resulting in an assessment of NCAA academic progress towards degree requirements.