ORLANDO, Fla. — Long live the transfer portal.
At first blush, it was derided as the great plague of college football, but it has turned into the great equalizer.
Think about it.
Without transfer wide receiver Johnny Wilson, the Florida State Seminoles probably don’t beat Louisville on Friday night to extend their record to 3-0 for the first time in seven years.
And without defensive end Jared Verse’s dominant performance against LSU two weeks ago, the Seminoles likely wouldn’t have beat LSU either.
These are just two of the dozens upon dozens of examples of why college football fans should be regaling the transfer portal instead of ruing it.
I’ll admit, I’ve totally changed my stance on the portal. While realizing it has its faults — such as the negative impact it has had on opportunities for high school recruits — it has been a boon for college football coaches and fans.
All you have to do is look around the state of Florida. As I mentioned, Wilson, the 6-foot-7, 235-pound transfer from Arizona State, had a monster game in catching seven passes for 149 yards and two fourth-quarter TDs from backup quarterback Tate Rodemaker to rally the Seminoles to a 35-31 victory over Louisville Friday night.
In FSU’s previous game against LSU, Verse, a transfer from Albany (an FCS program), had two sacks, 2.5 tackles for loss and blocked a field goal in the Seminoles’ thrilling 24-23 victory over the Tigers. Without Verse’s dominance and LSU triple-teaming him on the potential game-tying extra point on the final play of the game, teammate Shyheim Brown likely would not have been able to run free, block the PAT and clinch the victory.
As UCF prepared to play FAU on Saturday night, the team’s cumulative stats told you just how impactful the transfer portal has been. UCF’s starting quarterback (John Rhys Plumlee, Ole Miss), starting running back (Isaiah Bowser, Northwestern) and leading receiver (Javon Baker, Alabama) all came from the portal.
As for the Gators, it’s highly unlikely they would have upset then-No. 7 ranked Utah in the season opener without their best receiver (Ricky Pearsall, Arizona State) and their rushing leader Montrell Johnson (Louisiana) coming up big.
At Miami, the No. 13 Hurricanes headed into Saturday night’s showdown with No. 24 Texas A&M with one of the top rushing offenses in the country. Well, guess what? The leading rusher on the team is Henry Parrish, who came into the A&M game averaging 102 running yards per game.
And it’s not just major programs who are using the portal to their advantage; it’s lesser programs as well. For instance, all three of the non-conference upsets in last weekend’s Sun Belt coup d’état were led by transfer quarterbacks.
Marshall’s shocking 26-21 upset of Notre Dame was engineered by Henry Colombi, who started his career at Utah State before transferring to Texas Tech and then Marshall.
Georgia Southern’s Kyle Vantrease completed 37 of 56 for 409 yards in the 45-42 road victory over Nebraska that led to the Cornhuskers firing head coach Scott Frost. Before transferring to Southern, Vantrease started 26 games over five seasons at Buffalo.
And if you’re wondering why Appalachian State QB Chase Brice seemed unflustered on the road during last weekend’s 17-14 upset of then-No. 6 Texas A&M, it’s probably because he’s a 24-year-old veteran who played at Clemson and Duke.
When I suggested to UCF coach Gus Malzahn earlier this week that the transfer portal has become “the great equalizer” in college football, he concurred.
“I think you’re exactly right,” Malzahn said. “I think you’ll see more and more parity each year as the portal continues. College football is about the quarterback more than any position in any sport. More than half the teams in college football have transfer starting quarterbacks. I think that gives the so-called lesser opponent a better chance of being successful.”
It also gives college football players everywhere a chance to actually play the sport they love. Why should otherwise good players have to unhappily rot on the bench at their existing school when there could very well be another program where they can be happy contributors?
Why should Plumlee, who grew up dreaming of playing quarterback and signed with Ole Miss as a QB and then was moved to wide receiver, have to play a position he doesn’t want to play when another school (UCF) has a place for him to play the position he loves?
Former University of Florida quarterback Kyle Trask is often commended for sticking with UF even though it took four years to get a chance as the starter. However, if the previous starter, Feleipe Franks hadn’t suffered a season-ending injury in 2019, would Trask have ever gotten his chance? Would he have ever become the full-time starter, gone on to throw for more yards than any UF quarterback ever has in a single season and been drafted in the second round by the Tampa Bay Bucs?
How many thousands of really good athletes over the decades never got a chance to show their stuff because of the draconian, dictatorial transfer policies in college athletics?
Long live the transfer portal.
