College football’s offseason transfer portal window was utter chaos as expected, a relentless two-week run that resulted in more than 6,700 Division I players entering their names in the portal.
On Jan. 16, the transfer window closed for most players. Players who wanted to enter the portal and play elsewhere in 2026 needed to notify their school by midnight.
There’s no deadline for making a decision on where they’re going next. Players at Indiana and Miami will have an opportunity to transfer next week after the College Football Playoff National Championship. But for everyone else, the chance to make a move is over.
The nonstop run of transfer transactions officially began Jan. 2. Now that we’re at the finish line, here are five takeaways from a portal window that coaches, general managers, staffers, agents and players agreed was the wildest one yet.
Overpay or lose
This January window was unlike anything we’ve seen since the transfer portal was first established in 2018. Reducing the offseason transfer window to a two-week period and eliminating the spring transfer window meant teams had to get all their shopping for 2026 done as quickly as possible.
The resulting portal cycle played out precisely as expected: high speed, high pressure, high prices.
The price tag for the top returning quarterbacks moved into the $3 million to $5 million range this offseason, industry sources told ESPN, which was no shock. Several agents told ESPN they had no trouble finding deals for $1 million or more in the portal for the offensive tackles and defensive linemen they represented.
Industry sources say Colorado offensive tackle Jordan Seaton, the No. 1 uncommitted player in ESPN’s transfer rankings, can essentially name his price now that he’s officially on the open market. There’s very little precedent in the NIL era for a potential first-round NFL draft pick at left tackle entering the portal ahead of his junior year. Seaton visited Mississippi State on Thursday.
While players like Seaton and Cam Coleman, the No. 1 ranked receiver transferring from Auburn to Texas, are the rare outliers at their respective positions, the sense among front office staffers and agents surveyed by ESPN was teams knew they had to overspend now with no spring transfer portal to depend on later.
“These are your options,” one agent told ESPN. “If you’ve got holes, you can either not spend or you can overpay.”
Front offices and agents continued to operate with little fear of the College Sports Commission or the NIL Go platform this month, particularly while the CSC participation agreements remained unsigned. They continue to strike deals funded by a combination of revenue-share and third-party money.
It’s clear this will become an increasingly important topic in college athletics going forward as the CSC attempts to begin investigations and enforcement. But when the portal is open and hundreds of players are making commitments every day, schools can’t afford to hesitate. They’re paying whatever it takes to get the player signed now and will figure out the rest later.
Another packed QB carousel
The transfer quarterback market was extremely active as usual with nearly 200 FBS scholarship quarterbacks on the move. That’s not a record-setting number, but here’s the thing about this year’s portal QB crop: 40% were repeat transfers.
The timetable for making that first move is clearly getting moved up. After this QB carousel, 13 of the 17 quarterbacks in the 2024 ESPN 300 have transferred at least once with Air Noland (Memphis), Michael Van Buren Jr. (USF), Luke Kromenhoek (USF) and Hauss Hejny (Colorado State) moving on to their third school in three years.
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And we’ve seen eight ESPN 300 quarterbacks in the 2025 class hit the portal with Deuce Knight (Auburn to Ole Miss) and Husan Longstreet (USC to LSU) making big moves after redshirting this season.
Because this is the much shorter list, let’s just go with this: Here are all of the top-50 quarterback recruits in ESPN’s rankings from 2020 to 2023 who haven’t transferred, changed positions or retired during their college careers.
2020 (4): Bryce Young (Alabama), C.J. Stroud (Ohio State), Anthony Richardson Sr. (Florida), Garrett Greene (West Virginia)
2021 (5): J.J. McCarthy (Michigan), Drake Maye (North Carolina), Garrett Nussmeier (LSU), Jalen Milroe (Alabama), Behren Morton (Texas Tech)
2022 (5): Cade Klubnik (Clemson), Ty Simpson (Alabama), Drew Allar (Penn State), Gunner Stockton (Georgia), Sam Horn (Missouri)
2023 (7): Arch Manning (Texas), Christopher Vizzina (Clemson), Avery Johnson (Kansas State), Marcel Reed (Texas A&M), LaNorris Sellers (South Carolina), Emory Williams (Miami), Tucker McDonald (UConn)
Retention is not cheap
A common assumption entering this offseason portal cycle was that schools having the opportunity to lock in returning players on multiyear rev-share deals should help with roster retention and keeping priority players out of the portal.
Well, these players have agents. The agents are constantly communicating with GMs and receiving offers. Nobody needs to enter the portal first to determine their value. Reps are seeking raises for their clients regardless of performance. The backups and freshmen don’t come cheap anymore.
A common refrain when talking to GMs this month, especially those at top-25 programs: The public still doesn’t understand how expensive it is to retain the roster.
Fans frustrated that their team’s transfer portal class isn’t as star-studded as they hoped need to recognize how much time, effort and money is being directed toward putting out fires and keeping players out of the portal in December and January. In fact, some schools were still trying to make last-minute pushes this week for players who’d already re-signed.
Among the 18 programs that cleared 50% in Bud Elliott’s Blue-Chip Ratio for 2025, only five are getting through this two-week period with limited scholarship departures: Texas A&M (11), Clemson (12), Georgia (14), Notre Dame (15) and Miami (eight so far).
High-attrition offseasons were expected at LSU, Penn State, Florida, Auburn and Michigan amid head coaching changes, and Florida State losing 33 scholarship players after back-to-back losing seasons makes sense.
But Ohio State, Alabama, Oregon, Texas, Oklahoma, USC and Tennessee all had more than 20 scholarship players hit the portal in January. Even the programs that have serious resources must make tough decisions about which players they’re willing to pay up to keep and which ones are asking for too much.
High volume is now the norm
Remember when Deion Sanders brought in 50 transfers for his first year at Colorado and everybody (including yours truly) questioned the strategy? The Buffaloes went into that 2023 season with a nearly brand-new roster featuring nine returning scholarship players and 68 scholarship newcomers.
Years later, it’s only right to acknowledge that Coach Prime was ahead of his time.
Some of the most extreme roster rebuilds you’ve ever seen are underway this offseason. Oklahoma State has brought in 49 transfers, including 17 from North Texas. Penn State imported 23 players and nine signees from Iowa State. The Cyclones needed to get more than 40 transfers to replace those they’ve lost. UCLA, South Florida, Memphis and Arkansas are all bringing in more than 30 via the portal and LSU is nearly there, too. West Virginia is attempting a massive flip for Year 2 under Rich Rodriguez with 75 newcomers on the way, including 27 via the portal.
But it’s not just them. This offseason just further normalized the trend of programs looking to bring in 20-25 transfers per offseason to rebuild or reload. According to SportSource Analytics and Tracking Football, 39 FBS programs have landed 20 or more transfers this offseason.
Athletic directors looked at the stunning success of Curt Cignetti at Indiana as proof that seemingly impossible levels of success can be unlocked very quickly by the right hires. Now we’re about to watch Aiden Fisher, D’Angelo Ponds, Elijah Sarratt and their fellow James Madison transfers play for a national championship Monday.
The fascinating question going forward: Are Cignetti and the Hoosiers truly the one-of-one exception in this sport? Or is it possible we’ll see at least one of these teams engaged in rapid Year 1 rebuilds playing in the College Football Playoff in December?
Too many stuck in the portal
Entering the final day of the offseason transfer window, several agents told ESPN their work was finished now that each of their clients had found schools. The sense from GMs and directors of player personnel surveyed was that they still have a couple of remaining needs to address over the next week but that spots are filling up fast.
Indiana and Miami players have a Jan. 24 deadline to enter the transfer portal after the national title game. But beyond those players, portal activity should slow considerably in the days ahead as schools hit their enrollment deadlines.
What does that mean for all of the players who haven’t found a school?
There were still more than 1,200 unsigned FBS scholarship players in the NCAA’s transfer portal database as of Thursday night, sources told ESPN. It’s likely that group includes quite a few players who have verbally committed but haven’t officially signed yet.
Still, that’s a concerning number to see at this point in the process. It would mean more than one-third of the FBS scholarship players in the portal haven’t found a new home yet.
In the 2024-25 portal cycle, more than 97% of the scholarship players at Power 4 programs who transferred ended up matriculating to a new school. There’s no shortage of options at the FCS, Division II, D-III and junior college levels for players who are determined to keep playing.
But this cycle presented new challenges. Schools had to rapidly sort through the more than 6,500 Division I players who’ve hit the portal since Jan. 2 and sign who they wanted as fast as possible. If you were entering the portal with limited playing experience or were coming off an injury and all you had was practice film, good luck.
Another problem: Because pre-portal tampering was so rampant during the season and especially in December, players who didn’t have agents or representatives lining up offers and visits ahead of January were at a disadvantage. If you played by the rules and waited until Jan. 2 to begin your recruiting process, you were starting from behind.
Conversely, there’s no doubt there are also players stuck in the portal who were pushed out by their previous school or listened to bad advice from reps who could not deliver the dollars or destinations they expected.
So where will these unsigned players go now? The challenge is deciding whether to sign with a Group of 5/FCS/D-II program now or sit out the semester and hope better options emerge in April. The elimination of the spring transfer window might help their chances because these programs will still have injuries and depth concerns they need to address after spring practice.
After two intense weeks that seemed much more like speed dating than recruiting to GMs and agents, there are still good college football players out there waiting to be picked up. Some programs are going to find serious steals in the weeks ahead.
