Thompson was rated as a three-star prospect in the 2018 class coming out of Newcastle (Okla.). He was ranked as the No. 16 dual-threat quarterback in the cycle.

What is the NCAA transfer portal?

The portal is an online database that players will enter their names into if they decide to pursue a transfer. Players notify their current school’s compliance office that they wish to put their name into the portal; typically, players’ names show up within 48 hours. Coaches have access to the database and can contact any player who has entered.

Technically, players can enter the portal at any time. But unless they do so within their sport’s official “windows,” they will have to sit out one season.

College football has two windows: one following the regular season and one following spring practice. The fall portal window opens Dec. 3, one day after conference championship games. It will remain open for 30 days, closing at the end of the day on January 2, 2024. Players who compete in a postseason contest (the CFB Playoff or a bowl game) will be given an additional five-day window to transfer after their final contest.

Prior to this school year, players had 45 days to enter their name in the portal following the end of the regular season. The NCAA amended that rule this fall, cutting down the window to 30 days.

Is a player forced to leave his school after entering the portal?

No. In fact, players sometimes withdraw their names from the portal and end up staying with their respective programs.

Often times, however, the decision to enter the portal comes with some amount of displeasure on either the player’s side or the program’s side. Most players who enter the portal do not return to their previous school, and they’re often removed from the team immediately upon entering.

You could initially be skeptical that it’s just a recruit’s enhanced version of the story. Sure, sure, the old 4.4 40 time. Heard that yarn before. But maybe nod your head in this case since the head coach of the program the prospect had just joined had only 15 minutes earlier shared the same memory.

It’s a funny thing. Braylen Prude was texting a reporter back to say he was ready for a signing day interview just before Matt Rhule brought up the prospect from Pearland, Texas, unsolicited during his national signing day press conference.

Rhule was talking about how the Husker staff doesn’t just “airport recruit” the state of Texas. “They fly to DFW and drive within 40 minutes. And then they go back to the airport and they fly out,” the Husker head coach said of how some teams approach recruiting in the state.

It’s better to put your feet deeper in the soil. Maybe even co-host a camp down there, as the Huskers did in the Houston area in June. A full Husker staff was on the scene, and Rhule himself was working the stopwatch as a 6-4 prospect still growing into the frame put his feet down fast.

Wait, how fast was that?

“Braylen Prude, 6-foot-4, gets up at the camp on my watch and runs 4.42. And you’re like, ‘Run that again,” Rhule said. And? “And he ran that again.”

Prude remembers Rhule asking him what position he plays. Husker secondary coach Evan Cooper wanted to know himself. “Safety,” Prude told them.