Does The Transfer Portal Matter?

The transfer portal. It's all anyone and everyone is talking about. On one hand, you have your grandpa in your ear at the dinner table explaining how the transfer portal is the worst thing since communism. On the other hand, your younger cousin is regurgitating a half-watched TikTok he saw on why the transfer portal is making teenagers millionaires. You ask yourself, "What has this great nation come to. Has money and greed infiltrated this great pastime? Is this a late stage effect of capitalism? Should I be donating everything I own for a 3 star tight end from Montana State?" All good questions. Today, I'll be diving into whether or not the transfer portal is correlated to the success of these heavy-pocketed universities.

Let's start with defining what success is in college football. I know all of you Ohio State and Alabama fans out there are stuck in the "if you ain't first, you're last" mindset. Good for you guys, but, that's not realistic. Success can be measured in many ways. I like the greatest coach of all time Nick Saban's take on what determines the success of a teams season: Outcomes are a distraction. Saban talks about how the process and progress you make in a season defines success. Setting goals and achieving them is what defines a season. Given the fact that everyone in CFB has the goal of making the playoffs, I will be concluding that if you make the playoffs you've had a successful season.

Nick Saban's "outcomes are a distraction" quote per @thewinningdiff1

In order to get a good picture of the effect of the transfer portal, I'll be looking at how these so called "experts" ranked teams in the transfer portal in past seasons, and compare them to how they finished. In the end, we'll give an analysis on the future of CFB and whether or not all this guff is necessary.

2024 transfer portal top 10 rankings per 247 sports

Starting with 2024. At first glance, we can see the national champions Ohio State are sitting at 8. We've got a few other success stories such as Texas, Oregon, and Georgia who all did well in the transfer portal before the season. Here's a breakdown of where the top 10 finished the season:

Takeaways: Florida State was doing everything to make the case that the transfer portal doesn't mean squat. 7th in the transfer portal and last in the ACC... damn. Indiana, Penn State and Notre Dame didn't care that much about the transfer portal and were able to have a very successful season. Clemson completely disregarded the transfer portal adding 0 players and losing 12. However, this "failure" proved to have no effect on the success of Clemson's season... interesting.

2024 transfer portal top 10 rankings per 247 sports

Moving on to 2025. We see right off the bat that more top transfer portal teams finished with top CFP rankings. Texas Tech, Miami, Ole Miss, Oregon all benefiting hard from the portal. LSU, Missouri, Auburn, Kentucky... let's just say all of the SEC, not so much.

Takeaways: chaos. The correlation of the portal and the success of a season is all over the place. We have 3 out of the top 5 teams from the portal all reaching the semifinals. Then we have 6 of the top 10 finishing with very disappointing seasons.

Side note: Clemson's ignore the portal strategy did not pay off this year...

This is a tough call. Year after year we see plenty of teams fall in the portal rankings and still end up on top of the CFP rankings. Then, we see teams like 2025 LSU and 2024 Florida State receive a ton of hype due to the portal, and end up with disastrous seasons. In the end, I've come to the conclusion that the transfer portal can be an essential tool with great success. However, it doesn't look like it can make or break your season. Therefor... the transfer portal, for the most part, does not matter.