Winners And Losers From The 2024 College Football Transfer Portal

Justin looks at the top winners and losers from the transfer portal for 2024. Which teams improved ahead of the next college football season?

It used to be that the main way to win in college football was to out-recruit everyone. Bring in the best freshman class, develop it, and win a title down the line.

With the advent of the transfer portal, there's a new way to win, which is to grab top talent and use that talent to vie for a title immediately. Teams like LSU and Auburn have won titles with starting quarterbacks who transferred in.

Let's take a look at the biggest winners and losers of the transfer portal for the 2024 college football season.

Transfer Portal Winners

Florida State

The Seminoles were undefeated after last year's ACC title game, but the loss of quarterback Jordan Travis to injury meant that the committee kept them out of the playoffs. The response to that from FSU? A blowout loss to Georgia.

With Travis gone in 2024, the most important thing for this team was to shore up the quarterback position to keep them in ACC contention. They did that, adding DJ Uiagalelei, who formerly played at Clemson before transferring to Oregon State. Uiagalelei wasn't the best QB in the portal, but he fills an important need for this team. They have the talent to win with a Uiagalelei-type quarterback.

The Seminoles weren't done there though. The team added a lot of highly-regarded players in the portal including Alabama linebacker Shawn Murphy and offensive tackle Roydell Williams.

Miami

Miami went in the portal to find a quarterback and they arguably grabbed the best one there was, coaxing former Washington State passer Cam Ward to un-declare for the NFL Draft and join Mario Cristobal's team. Ward, who started his career at FCS program UIW before spending the past two seasons at Wazzu, is capable of making any throw. In two seasons at the FBS level, Ward has thrown for 6,968 yards and 48 touchdowns.

Ward's the headliner, but additions like Indiana center Zach Carpenter and Washington defensive back Mishael Powell should also help this team contend in the ACC in 2024.

Ohio State

The Buckeyes lost quarterback Kyle McCord to Syracuse but grabbed the massively underrated Will Howard to replace him. Then they took advantage of Nick Saban's retirement to grab three strong Alabama players—center Seth McLaughlin safety and SEC Freshman of the Year Caleb Downs, and quarterback recruit Julian Sayin, one of the top 2024 quarterbacks.

Oh, and they also added arguably the best running back in the portal in Ole Miss' Quinshon Judkins, who rushed for 1,158 yards and 15 touchdowns last season for the Rebels. Things look bright in Columbus.

Ole Miss

Yes, Ole Miss lost the aforementioned Judkins to Ohio State, but Lane Kiffin still managed to bring an incredible amount of talent to Oxford, bringing in 17 transfers to the program. The top addition was Texas A&M defensive lineman Walter Nolen, but the team also grabbed many strong players. 247 has Ole Miss losing one player rated four stars or better to the portal while adding nine of them to the roster. Just a masterful job by Kiffin to reload.

Oregon

With Bo Nix off for the NFL, the Ducks needed to land a good quarterback if they wanted to contend immediately in the Big Ten. They did that, grabbing Oklahoma's Dillon Gabriel, who has thrown for over 3,000 yards four times in his career and has a pair of 30-touchdown seasons to his name. The team also made a big move for the future at QB, grabbing Dante Moore from UCLA.

Oregon wasn't done there, though. They grabbed Gabriel one of the best weapons available in the portal in Texas A&M wide receiver Evan Stewart, who had 514 yards and four touchdowns in eight games last season.

Transfer Portal Losers

Alabama

Nick Saban's retirement really led to some shake-up at Alabama, as numerous top players departed from the program. While Kalen DeBoer has managed to fill some of those holes, overall there are a lot of holes to fill.

Wide receiver Isaiah Bond landed at Texas. Safety Caleb Downs went to Ohio State. Five-star quarterback recruit Julian Sayin is a Buckeye as well. Kadyn Proctor, the team's starting left tackle, left for Iowa. This is still a top SEC program, but this definitely wasn't the kind of portal season you'd have seen in the Saban era.

Clemson

So far, Clemson has added zero players in the transfer portal, which shouldn't be a surprise. In 2023, they added one player. In 2022, one player. Dabo Swinney just doesn't use the portal.

And maybe that explains why Clemson is what it is right now. The Tigers still develop in-house talent well, but the team seems to be missing something to put it over the top. Maybe Dabo should stop this anti-portal crusade he's been on.

Mississippi State

The Jeff Lebby era might not be off to a great start at Mississippi State. The team lost quarterback Will Rogers to Washington and is replacing him with Baylor's Blake Shapen, which is a fairly big downgrade. Meanwhile on defense, the team lost some really good talent and just wasn't able to bring much in to replace that talent. If we look at the 247 ratings, we see that the Bulldogs lost three four-star players and only brought one four-star, Buffalo tight end Cameron Ball, in.

Purdue

The Boilermakers were just absolutely decimated by the portal. While they added some talented players like Georgia corner Nyland Green and wide receiver C.J. Smith, the team saw 25 players exit. That includes five players that 247 has rated as four stars. The wide receiver room in particular was decimated, with Deion Burks heading to Oklahoma and Abdur-Rahmaan Yaseen to South Florida while Curtis Deville is currently in the portal as well.

Washington

The Huskies made some good portal additions, including grabbing quarterback Will Rogers from Mississippi State, but it's hard to call them winners when basically every starter who didn't graduate ended up leaving in the portal. Jabbar Muhammad, Parker Brailsford, Austin Mack, and Germie Bernard are all four-star players on 247 and all left. Even with some good talent coming in, the fact that the 2024 Huskies will look completely different introduces so much uncertainty into the team's outlook.

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