Champions raised their trophies, the crowd erupted, and the last buzzer faded. However, the story doesn’t end on the court for a lot of college basketball student-athletes. They begin thinking about where they want to go next, searching for a new start or a new chance. And this season, the path to that next chapter is shifting in an important way, which leads to the NCAA’s new proposal.

The NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Oversight Committees have suggested a major change to the transfer process. Instead of keeping the 30-day window that opens after the second round of March Madness, the committees want the portal to begin only after the Final Four ends and stay open for a shorter 15-day period. This timing lines up with the end of the 2026 tournament, which begins with selections on Sunday, March 15.

For 2026, the proposed dates are April 6 to 20 for women and April 7 to 21 for men. This means every college basketball athlete, whether eliminated in round one or playing in the title game, would work with the same timeline. Why the change?

The motivation is built on fairness and clarity. In the old system, players from early exit teams could already explore transfers while top teams were still battling through March Madness. That created uneven chances and extra stress for coaches who were trying to prepare for games while also managing roster uncertainty. By waiting until the tournament ends, the committees hope every team begins the process on equal ground.

The proposal also touches on transfers triggered by coaching changes. College basketball players would get a five-day window to meet new staff and a 15-day portal window to decide on transferring. If no head coach is hired within 30 days, the window opens automatically.

However, the NCAA Division I Cabinet will review the plan in January, and if it receives approval, the new system will take effect in April 2026. For players and programs, these 15 days could become the most intense stretch of the spring, arriving immediately after the emotion and pressure of March Madness. And this shift comes during a year when college basketball has already seen major rule changes elsewhere.

College Basketball’s biggest shakeups yet

The NCAA had already made a major adjustment before this new proposal. In 2024, the transfer-portal window for college basketball used to stay open for 45 days, giving college basketball players a long period to explore new teams. But the NCAA decided that this long window was creating too much chaos for coaches and programs.  To fix this, the NCAA reduced the window from 45 days to 30 days.

The idea was to shorten the time players had to make transfer decisions so that schools could quickly understand who was staying and who was leaving. But it seems this year, the NCAA has made even bigger adjustments.

This year, one of the biggest changes in college sports came from a legal case called House v. NCAA, which was finalized in June 2025. Under this settlement, the NCAA removed long-standing scholarship limits for schools that choose to opt in. Before this change, every sport had strict caps on how many athletes could receive athletic scholarships, forcing coaches to split awards into tiny percentages and leaving many players with partial aid.

Following the settlement, the sport-specific limits were abolished, and schools had more freedom to fund athletes. Rather than being limited by scholarship, the system is now limited by roster size. It means that a school is free to award scholarships to all the athletes they have on their team, provided that they remain within the new maximum number of participants in the sport.

However, it went into effect on July 1, 2025. In the case of most programs, this paved the way to more scholarships, stronger rosters, and more athletes, as well as a new competitive environment whereby schools that are better funded might have an advantage.