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There's been a lot of freaking out around here about football players transferring, and it's the first week of sports data class, so I decided for a first day class demo to break down the transfer portal. Strap in Husker fans, a thread.
First, the actual transfer portal is not publicly visible, but 24/7 Sports has been tracking athletes who have announced publicly they were transferring. https://247sports.com/Season/2021-Football/TransferPortal/
There's been some reporting that the total players in the transfer portal is around 1,500 and 24/7 Sports has 1,154 of them in their tracker. So what follows is missing some players, but it's the best view we have.
The median college football program has 7 players transferring out. If you view transfers as bad -- I don't -- then above that means you have more leaving than the typical team. In 24/7's portal, Nebraska has 11 transfers.
Notable teams with more transfers than Nebraska: Rutgers, Notre Dame, Michigan and Kansas State with 12; Texas, Oklahoma, Maryland and Auburn with 13; Michigan State with 14; recruiting poster children North Carolina with 18 and neon orange garbage fire Tennessee #1 with 24.
The primary teeth gnashing in Lincoln is about offensive players leaving, specifically wide receivers and a quarterback. Guess what? The top position group transferring in college football? Wide receivers at 203 in the portal. QBs are #3 with 121 of them transferring this year.
NOTE: There are 130 teams in the FBS. To be a quarterback and think you're going to transfer somewhere and play right away is to think a huge number of FBS teams are actively looking for someone else to be their quarterback than what they recruited to their roster.
And where are these players going to? By 24/7's count, the answer is ... nowhere, at least not yet. Of the 1,154 players in the portal, 644 of them haven't found a team yet. It's entirely possible a sizeable chunk of them won't.
The most active team in the portal is ... Jackson State. They've taken in 14 players. Only 4 other teams have taken double digits. For 644 players to find roster spots, to say nothing for scholarships, a whole lot of teams are going to have to start taking in large numbers.
What do I think this all means? I think College Football fans have to realize that the sport now has a free agency period and teams are going to lose players every year. However, the more players who enter the portal and never leave, the fewer transfers you'll see.
Does Nebraska have a transfer problem? We've lost a few more than the median team, sure, but we've lost fewer than teams we compare ourselves to, and we've lost them at positions most likely to enter the portal. Sorry, we're not special. This is just college football now.
