College Football Transfer Portal Getting Scary For More Than 1,000 Players Still Uncommitted

Every college football player who enters their name into the transfer portal believes they will land at a better opportunity and end up starting, excelling, and eventually ending up in the NFL. However, for many, entering the transfer portal is the last thing a player does while still being a collegiate athlete.

This week, that reality is settling in for more than 1,000 players who still have not found a new home.

Only Six Players Have Committed In the Past Week

The transfer portal is still a new concept, and the research on it is still unreliable; however, a few data points are starting to show a pattern that may be true about it. The first is that only six players have committed in the past week. With the season rapidly approaching (Fall Camp begins in just over a month), teams have mostly filled in the positions they need to fill with the players they want to fill them with.

At this point, if a team is still looking at getting players from the transfer portal, there are probably bigger issues going on. Of course, there are exceptions to this, including players quitting, injuries, or eligibility issues, which would, of course, lead to a team dipping into the portal to fill in the gap, but for the most part, all of these players have been in the portal for two months. If nobody wanted them for two months, why is there suddenly a demand?

There isn’t.

The number of players signing with teams nationally in the future will likely stay under ten per week until the season starts. This means we are realistically looking at 50-75 players signing between now and Week 1.

College Football Players Appear to be Settling

Sometimes, a four-star athlete who was recruited by every major university doesn’t pan out. They enter their name in the portal and expect to be picked up and recruited the same way they were out of high school. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen, and eventually, these players just settle.

This appears to be happening now. Looking at past three and four-star recruits, six of the last ten have gone down from P4 to G5 or FCS, while only four have recommitted to another P4 school. This wasn’t the case early on in the transfer portal windows. Before, great G5 players jumped up to P4, and even average P4 stayed at the P4 level.

When former 4-star players leave Michigan for West Georgia and 3-star players from Texas go to Nevada (they finished 2-10 last year), it’s clear that these players just want to continue to play, even though the team they entered the portal didn’t match their expectations.

Three Year Threshold Is Being Met

Another good data point is the percentage of transfers who never find a new team. Here are the results for the past four years.

• • 2021: 67.2%
  • 2022: 67.5%
  • 2023: 64.8%
  • 2024 (So Far): 63.6%

Again, this is only four years of data, and the rules are always changing, so this isn’t a set rule or trend to depend on, but it is curious that every year, the final number of players who end up without a new team has ranked between 33% and 35%. 

Considering that there are still 1,205 players without a new team, and when you throw in the 50-75 that I projected finding a new team between now and the start of the season, that would put the total around 64.8% of players committed, matching last year’s percentage.

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With all of this data, it is clear that the 1,205 still uncommitted players have just about run out of options, and it may be time to panic.

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