College football transfer portal Week 1 takeaways
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Max Olson, ESPN Staff Writer
The college football transfer portal officially opened for business Monday. There already have been more than 1,500 FBS scholarship players — and almost 2,000 total FBS players — enter their names into the portal.
For context, the total number of FBS players who transferred in 2018-19, the first year of the portal era, was 1,561. Those were simpler times.
As we head into a big weekend of official visits for transfers and teams start filling up their commit lists, here are takeaways from the first few days of portal mania.
Jump to a section:
Teams hit hardest
Pass catchers in demand
QBs | Trend to watch
Tracking the subtraction
Four days into this wild first week of transfer activity, these programs have had the most scholarship players enter the portal:
Power 4
26: Arizona
24: Arkansas, Mississippi State
21: Kentucky
20: Purdue
19: Oklahoma, Texas A&M
18: Utah
It’s notable that this list, at least early on in the process, is heavy on SEC programs. That’s not just bottom-of-the-roster attrition. Arkansas, Mississippi State and Kentucky are losing proven starters who are being heavily recruited by Power 4 contenders and other teams within their conference. There’s probably several reasons behind those moves, but it does speak to how closely everyone in that conference is scouting and shopping from one another’s depth charts.
Group of 5
35: New Mexico
29: Charlotte
27: Marshall, Western Kentucky
25: Coastal Carolina, Tulsa
22: Middle Tennessee, Sam Houston
20: Louisiana Tech, UAB
The theme here is easy to identify: In this era, if your head coach built with transfers and then is fired or leaves, the transfers are leaving, too. The rosters at New Mexico, Charlotte, Marshall, Tulsa and Sam Houston are being gutted as those programs transition to new regimes. Some of these players will have an opportunity to follow their coaches to the next destination. But if you’re the coach who’s moving in next, such as Tim Albin at Charlotte, you’re starting off with a legitimate roster crisis. Going into the portal to reconstruct the roster is becoming an unavoidable first step for these jobs.
“You’re not building a program anymore,” Coastal Carolina coach Tim Beck told reporters Thursday. “This isn’t a program. Each year, you just build a team. You try to find the best team that you can put out there every year, and you know the team is going to get hit by free agency.”
Which rosters have taken the most damage this week? Here are three that stand out:
Arizona: The first four days of the portal cycle took a significant toll on coach Brent Brennan’s Wildcats, particularly on defense. Since Monday, Arizona has seen the departures of linebacker Jacob Manu — a three-year starter — and flurry of defensive backs between second-team All-Big 12 selection Tacario Davis, 2024 leading tackler Dalton Johnson and multiyear starters Treydan Stukes and Gunner Maldonado, both of whom sat out some time this season because of injury. Together, the group of defenders account for more than 130 career starts, leaving the Wildcats after a 4-8 finish in Brennan’s first season.
Oklahoma: The Sooners are staring down a comprehensive offensive rebuild ahead of a critical fourth season for coach Brent Venables this fall. Former five-star quarterback Jackson Arnold officially landed in the portal earlier this week and a mass exodus by Oklahoma wide receivers followed soon after. The team is down six receivers with the departures of Nic Anderson, Jalil Farooq, Andrel Anthony, Brenen Thompson, J.J. Hester, Jaquaize Pettaway in Week 1. The career stats of those receivers: 245 receptions, 4,059 receiving yards and 26 touchdowns. The exit of tight end Bauer Sharp, who led the Sooners in receptions and receiving yards, marks another blow, and quarterback Brendan Zurbrugg, running backs Kalib Hicks and Emeka Megwa and offensive linemen Joshua Bates and Geirean Hatchett round out a total of 13 departures to date from a unit that closed the regular season ranked No. 121 nationally in total offense (322.5 yards per game).
Arkansas: Coach Sam Pittman finds himself in a similar position, with plenty of reloading to do in this next portal cycle following the Razorbacks’ 6-6 season. Eight starters on their end-of-season depth chart are currently available in the portal, including a trio of offensive linemen (Patrick Kutas, Joshua Braun and Addison Nichols), receiver Isaiah Sategna, tight end Luke Hasz, defensive end Nico Davillier, linebacker Brad Spence and safety TJ Metcalf. Pittman has acknowledged it’s a frustrating situation to be in but insists the attrition isn’t due to any lack of money. He’s optimistic Arkansas can win battles for a lot of SEC-caliber talent to fill those spots, but it won’t be cheap.
Pass catchers in high demand
Fourteen of the top 50 players in ESPN’s transfer rankings are wide receivers — and that might be too few.
It’s a loaded cycle for wide receiver talent with numerous of playmakers making themselves available and hoping to cash in on high demand. Georgia Tech’s Eric Singleton Jr. is widely viewed as the top receiver available. He’s only a sophomore but is considered a playmaker with early-round draft-pick potential if he makes the right move for 2025. Auburn, Ole Miss and Georgia are battling for his services.
But if you asked several other personnel departments which receiver they like most, you’d probably get a variety of answers. Dane Key (Kentucky), Barion Brown (Kentucky), Kevin Concepcion (NC State), Anderson (Oklahoma) and Duce Robinson (USC) are extremely talented playmakers. Mario Craver (Mississippi State), Nyziah Hunter (Cal) and Micah Hudson (Texas Tech) are young but promising prospects. There are also lots of receivers at the Group of 5 level who’ll get an opportunity to move up this offseason, including Florida International’s Eric Rivers, East Carolina’s Chase Sowell and Miami (Ohio)’s Reggie Virgil.
We’re also seeing an unusually strong market for tight ends so far in this cycle. That’s not typically a deep position in the portal, but quite a few pass catchers have already popped up that Power 4 teams covet and more than 90 FBS scholarship tight ends are currently in the portal. Evaluators view Purdue’s Max Klare as the best of the bunch, but Tanner Koziol (Ball State), Hasz (Arkansas), Sharp (Oklahoma) and Terrance Carter (Louisiana) are all being heavily recruited and there are many more out there with starting experience and proven production.
QB decisions rolling in
A month ago, we previewed this transfer portal cycle and suggested that, as one industry source put it, there wouldn’t be any $3 million quarterbacks in this cycle. We haven’t seen a quarterback portal entry so far that was particularly jaw-dropping. Most of the QBs who look like potential Heisman contenders in 2025 are remaining with their current teams.
Tulane’s Darian Mensah and Cal’s Fernando Mendoza were viewed by many personnel departments as two of the best options if they became available, and both did opt to transfer. Duke made Mensah a major priority, knowing it would cost them starter Maalik Murphy. Mendoza entered the portal Wednesday and should have a relatively quick recruitment as well.
Conner Weigman (Houston), Thomas Castellanos (Florida State), Devon Dampier (Utah) and Walker Howard (Louisiana) found their right fits and didn’t hesitate to commit. We might see a few more notable names pop up in the portal in the days ahead, with Maryland starter Billy Edwards Jr. becoming the latest to declare he’ll transfer. But with 130 scholarship QBs already available, we generally know who’s out there. Expect a lot more clarity on who’s going where by Sunday and Monday after the first weekend of official visits.
Trend to watch
Here’s an issue that concerns coaches and administrators, one that will be worth tracking over the rest of this offseason: the repeat transfers.
If you dig into the data on the first 1,500 FBS scholarship players who’ve entered the transfer portal in this 2024-25 cycle, 31% are players who have previously transferred during their college career. A high percentage is to be expected going forward now that the NCAA can no longer enforce its one-time transfer rule and is permitted unlimited transfers if players meet academic requirements. In last year’s portal cycle, 25% were repeat transfers.
The more alarming trend would be a substantial increase in players who haven’t graduated transferring for a second or third time. Last year, those players were responsible for 11% of the transfers in the cycle. In this cycle, nearly 18% of repeat transfers haven’t earned their degree.
This is heading in a troubling direction, and it’s hard to see an easy solution. The current roster rules are making it easy for coaching staffs to drop their underperforming players. They’re taking more chances on transfers than ever before. If those transfers don’t earn the starting job, playing time or money they expected, they’ll go back in the portal and try again somewhere else. The downside of multiple moves is losing credit hours and progress toward a degree.
There are more than 450 scholarship transfers in this current cycle who have been in the portal before. Most are looking to join the third team of their career, but some are now looking for their fourth.
ESPN reporter Eli Lederman contributed to this story.
