College football’s transfer portal opened on Friday, and there are already hundreds of players who have entered, looking for their next team. Love it or hate it, there is no denying this is the way college sports now works, and these next two weeks will play a big role in determining which teams are contenders next season.
So let’s look at some of the biggest winners and losers from the first day of the transfer portal opening.
Winner: Quarterback-needy teams
If you want to be a national championship team, you need the right quarterback.
The path to finding the right quarterback used to be getting a five-star recruit, developing them over time and getting the long-term payout.
Not the case anymore.
It is all about the transfer portal, and all four teams still standing in this year’s College Football Playoff can vouch for that.
Oregon (Dante Moore), Miami (Carson Beck), Ole Miss (Trinidad Chambliss) and Indiana (Fernando Mendoza) all got their playoff quarterbacks from other programs and are now reaping the benefits of having an experienced quarterback step into the right situation.
It is entirely possible somebody in the portal this year will be playing for a national championship next season. There are no shortage of intriguing options, including Arizona State’s Sam Leavitt, Cincinnati’s Brendan Sorsby and North Texas’ Drew Mestemaker.
Auburn is getting hit particularly hard in this year’s portal with over 30 players already entering. None are more significant than wide receiver Cam Coleman.
Coleman is the top non-quarterback in the portal as of Friday, and he is arguably the top player overall.
The 6-foot-3 freshman caught 56 passes for 708 yards and five touchdowns for the Tigers this season.
Auburn will probably offset some of its portal losses as new head coach Alex Golesh brings in his players, but for right now, the losses are mounting for the Tigers — and Coleman is a significant one.
Winner: Linebacker Rasheem Biles
The one position that does not have a ton of talent in this year’s portal is linebacker, and that is what makes Pitt linebacker Rasheem Biles such a big winner.
He is a fantastic player and is coming off a monster bowl game performance where he was the one Pitt player who seemed to show up. He can do it all from stopping the run, to rushing the passer to making plays in coverage. He is going to have an extensive list of interested teams and could find himself as the centerpiece of a national championship contending defense.
Whenever a team loses a head coach, there is going to be significant turnover. Iowa State, in the wake of Matt Campbell’s departure to Penn State, is no exception. But this also seems to be a bit extreme as the Cyclones roster has been decimated in the early part of the offseason. Every position group on both sides of the ball has been hit hard, and it is going to fall on new head coach Jimmy Rogers to replenish the cupboard.
Do the Cyclones have the funds to rebuild an entire roster through the portal?
The recruiting base?
Campbell’s departure could end up setting the program back several years.
Winner: Michigan’s defense (potentially)
Now that Michigan has landed its next head coach in Kyle Whittingham, it seems logical that some of Whittingham’s players from Utah could follow him to Ann Arbor.
The most significant of those players could be defensive end John Henry Daley. He is one of the top defensive players — and players overall — to enter the portal and could be a game-changer for whatever defense he ends up on. If you were a betting person, keep an eye on Michigan.
Loser: College football fans
This is not a new take, but it is also one that is hard to ignore.
Players deserve to have the freedom to put themselves into a good situation. They deserve to get a piece of the financial pie that is the college football business.
But this much roster turnover from year to the next makes it incredibly difficult to get attached to players, a team or a program right now. If you are small school that finds success, you know your team is about to get poached. If you are not an elite Power Four team, you probably feel like you are getting left on the outside.
There is no more team-building and program-building over the long haul. It is all just a Wild West free-for-all that makes keeping tabs on a team and roster nearly impossible.
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