College Football Portal Data Analysis Part 2
Which School are most active in the Transfer Portal?
This post is part two of my look at the College Football Transfer Portal. We’re going to jump right into this post. If you need a 101 on what the portal is or what the stakes are, please reference my first post on the transfer portal. Let’s follow the data! This will be fun
The first graphic shows the school with the biggest gains from the portal and the largest losses since it opened in 2021.
Portal Net Movements
Portal Gainers
A lot of the top 10 portal gainer schools are not what typical football school blue bloods, schools like Florida A&M, Alabama A&M, Eastern Kentucky, Northern Iowa, Southern Alabama, and Abilene Christian.
Surprisingly, the biggest gainer over this time has been Texas State. Perhaps this is known in San Marcos, TX, but it looks like the Bobcats are trying to build something through the portal. Texas is well represented here, with Sam Houston State in the top 3.
It’s well documented that Coach Prime was in Jackson State before becoming the coach of Colorado. Jackson State and Colorado are featured prominently in this data, definitely taking the perspective that the portal is the tool to quickly transform your team.
Portal Losers
The schools losing the most players are more typically considered football schools. The largest net loser over this period has been Washington State by a margin, losing on net 80 players since the portal opened. Shortly after are big time programs Tennessee and Texas A&M. It’ll be interesting to see why players are leaving A&M. The few are basketball schools trying to get their football program going — North Carolina and Maryland.
By Year and School
Portal Gainers By Year
By adding year to the mix, we can get a sense of which specific years were large movers for a school. The top two gaining years were from Coach Prime in Jackson state in 2021 and 2022. Following that, Texas had a few big-time portal gainers in Texas State and Sam House State.
Portal Losers by Year
Tied for first in net difference is Tennessee (2021) and Washington State
(2023), losing 27 players. They’ve on net lost players through the portal every year.
Total Movement
Colorado breaks the graph on total movements. Most of that comes from 2023, Prime’s first year. With 107 total portal movements, 59 Originating from Colorado (almost whole team leaving) and 48 Arriving.
Let’s zoom in on what happened in Colorado in 2023. They tripled their total movement in one year. That’s hard to put a team together that way. Hard to build a locker room and a culture. Perhaps that’s why we saw the team fall apart as the season went on.
Thoughts on Departures
Through this analysis, I’ve found it’s more important to determine what quality of players are joining a school, rather than just calculating the net difference. I have a working theory that before the portal there was always some percentage of players that would leave a team. This could happen from injury or maybe college football just wasn’t for them. I think the Net Difference numbers might be high because the portal is now a last ditch place for players to put their name out there and try to stay in football. Just a working theory at the moment.
What working through the data has made clear is that there are many reasons a player will leave a program. Some transfers are ‘good’ for the player and some are ‘good’ for the school. Depends on where the leverage is and who is looking for gain. It’s a openly a business now.
Ideas on Transfer Types
Good Transfer from Player Perspective
- ) Going to start Somewhere else, i.e. they were deeper in the depth chart and not getting to the field
- ) Going for more NIL Money. i.e. they were starting at a school, and were recognized for their value and are being paid accordingly.
- ) Personal reasons like closer to home, etc. These sort of transfers have always happened, I think.
Good Transfers from School Perspective
1.) The school has better players coming in, either through portal or high school recruiting pipeline, i.e. pushing a player out.
Portal Movements By Conference
Let’s take a deeper look at portal movements by conference
SEC Portal Stats
The top destination schools in the SEC have been Ole Miss, Auburn, Arkansas. Hardly SEC blue bloods. While Georgia and Alabama have had fewer players go there. When your roster is full of 5 stars, it’s hard to find reason to go to the portal.
As far as departures, a lot of Tennessee departures. The two current blue bloods here that have dominated the last several years, Alabama and Georgia, have much higher ratio of players Originating in the Portal. It’ll be interesting to see if these players are hard to hold onto for a long time, as I’m sure many Alabama and Georgia players will be offered nice NIL cash to transfer to other schools. Playing time and bags of cash are hard to turn down. Something to watch.
Big 10 Portal Stats
The top destination schools in the Big 10 have been Indiana, Michigan State, Nebraska and Purdue. Similar to the SEC, these are hardly the Big 10 blue bloods. Ohio State and Michigan are in the bottom 5 of destinations, similar to the Georgia and Alabama of their conference, with more talented rosters. Also, Iowa has not had many transfers… Why doesn’t anyone want to go to Iowa! Maybe that’ll change after being in the 2023 conference championship.
As far as departures, a lot of Maryland, Indiana, and Nebraska departures. So those schools are having a lot of movement generally.
Big 12 Portal Stats
The top destination schools in the Big 12 have been Oklahoma, UCF, Houston, and Kansas. It’s interesting that Oklahoma is number one, Brent Venables and team attacked the portal more than I realized. This makes sense after Lincoln Riley left, this roster was in rebuild mode.
Similar to the other programs, these top 5 schools are not the schools that have had the most success, but those are schools that are investing heavily in their football programs. Or in the case of Houston and UCF — schools that have recently moved to the Big 12 and perhaps are trying to adjust their rosters accordingly.
As far as departures, a lot of West Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas departures. I’d like to develop an approach that gives a better sense of what kinds of transfers these are.
So through Portal Analysis 2, we’ve really figured out which schools are very active in the portal. But it’s become more clear to me that there are many kinds of portal movements. And from this view, it’s still difficult to tell which schools are getting better from the portal, what kinds of transfers are taking place, and are their any predictors of teams that have a high number of transfers? Does team success from the year contribute to the number of portal players?
What do you think of these questions? What am I missing? Follow along when I complete my Portal Analysis 3 next week!
