Grandfathered ticket purge begins.
- By RockingCC
- Inside the 40 Acres
- 238 Replies
Friend of mine with 20+ tickets received this from CDC.
Transfer portal cautionary tales: The Athletic
- By SWTHORN123
- Inside the 40 Acres
- 2 Replies
Interesting read regarding TF portal, mostly misses.
At least seven Florida State defenders were in a reasonable position to tackle Miami running back Damien Martinez late in Saturday night’s game.
Martinez was surrounded and should’ve been limited to a short gain. Instead, he kept his feet moving and simply out-efforted the Seminoles defense as he broke out of the pile and ran for 53 yards. It was one of the lasting images from FSU’s 36-14 loss to the Hurricanes — a defeat that sealed a losing season that has been weeks, if not months, in the making.
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Florida State has been a massive disappointment on offense, defense and on the sidelines with Mike Norvell. A preseason top-10 team is now 1-7, and its remaining schedule still includes North Carolina, Notre Dame and Florida, along with Charleston Southern.
This comes after an offseason in which Norvell received widespread praise for how well he’s navigated the transfer portal and Florida State’s roster rebuild after the program cratered under Jimbo Fisher’s and Willie Taggart’s watch.
It’s true that Norvell might’ve utilized the portal better than any coach in the country as he guided FSU to 23 wins and one ACC championship over the past two seasons. There have been 12 Seminoles selected over the past three NFL Drafts, including 10 who were transfers identified by Norvell and his staff — headlined by edge rusher Jared Verse, who arrived from Albany and became an All-American and first-round pick.
It’s also true you should proceed with caution if you are a fan of a team that’s enjoying success this season due in large part to its work in the portal. We have yet to see a program sustain a high level of success following this model in this new era of roster building. It might happen, but the next example will be the first.
Florida State is just one case. What can we learn from the Seminoles and others?
Among those additions, Michigan State found a starting left tackle (Jarrett Horst), a starting linebacker who notched 75 tackles (Quavaris Crouch), two starting defensive backs (Chester Kimbrough and Ronald Williams) and the headliner, Kenneth Walker III, who rushed for 1,636 yards and 18 touchdowns.
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Walker elevated everyone else around him, willed the Spartans to a win over eventual Big Ten champion Michigan, was a consensus All-American, finished sixth in Heisman Trophy voting and won the Doak Walker Award.
Michigan State went 11-2 and won the Peach Bowl that season after going 9-11 over the previous two years. It looked like a potential breakthrough season.
Tucker wasn’t as active following the 2021 season, but the Spartans still added nine transfers.
Michigan State tried to replace Walker by adding two transfer running backs in Jarek Broussard, who overlapped with Tucker at Colorado in 2019, and Jalen Berger, who transferred from Wisconsin. But neither could fill that void. Defensive back Ameer Speed posted 62 tackles and was a sixth-round pick in 2023. Linebacker Aaron Brule posted 94 tackles and nine sacks across two seasons with the Spartans.
The transfer class wasn’t nearly as impactful as the 2021 group. Michigan State opened the season as a preseason top-15 team, but its roster deficiencies were exposed in a Week 3 loss to Washington, and the Spartans finished 5-7.
Kenneth Walker rushed for 1,636 yards at Michigan State in 2021. (Rich Schultz / Getty Images)
Lincoln Riley was hired in late November and immediately reshaped USC’s roster. In April 2021, the NCAA ruled that first-time transfers would have immediate eligibility after most had to sit out a season in prior years. USC also capitalized on an NCAA bylaw that allowed new coaches to basically process (read: cut) players out of the program up to a year after their hire.
So there were more transfers available, and Riley had an avenue to create the scholarship space needed.
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Before Deion Sanders wildly flipped Colorado’s roster, Riley and USC were the poster boys for a massive roster overhaul. The Trojans added 19 transfers while 20 players from the previous regime transferred out.
The additions far outweighed the subtractions. USC orchestrated a stunning turnaround in 2022 as it won 11 games and nearly made the College Football Playoff.
No transfer had a bigger hand in that than quarterback Caleb Williams, who won the Heisman Trophy in 2022 and is arguably the best transfer quarterback of the portal era.
USC also added running back Travis Dye, who rushed for 1,271 yards and 16 touchdowns for Oregon in 2021, talented Oklahoma receiver Mario Williams, Colorado corner Mekhi Blackmon, Virginia offensive tackle Bobby Haskins, Arizona State linebacker Eric Gentry and, in the spring portal window, landed Biletnikoff Award winner and Pitt receiver Jordan Addison. All of those transfers played significant roles for the Trojans that season.
Even with a successful season, USC still had clear personnel deficiencies to address, so it hit the portal the following offseason. And with Williams back for 2023, USC was an attractive transfer destination.
The Trojans added three highly touted offensive line transfers (Emmanuel Pregnon, Michael Tarquin and Jarrett Kingston), four defensive linemen who were supposed to solidify the leaky run defense (Bear Alexander, Anthony Lucas, Jack Sullivan and Kyon Barrs), an All-Big 12 linebacker (Mason Cobb), the No. 2 receiver in the Pac-12 (Dorian Singer) and a talented running back from the SEC (MarShawn Lloyd).
In 2022, USC featured a strong offensive line that was built around veterans who spent several years playing together. The 2023 line featured those three transfers, and it was clear from the opening game the unit lacked chemistry. The O-line became the most disappointing part of the team and was consistently exploited by the better defenses.
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And aside from Alexander, none of the defensive linemen made a real impact, and some even fell completely out of the rotation. Cobb struggled in a bad defensive scheme. And on offense, Singer never really fit in. After he caught 66 passes for 1,105 yards and six scores at Arizona in 2022, he recorded just 24 receptions for 289 yards and three scores in one season at USC.
The portal class was ranked third nationally by 247Sports but was filled with missed evaluations from the coaching staff.
It was emblematic of USC’s humbling and embarrassing 2023 season. The Trojans were viewed as Pac-12 title favorites and Playoff contenders. Instead, they finished the regular season 7-5 after a 6-0 start.
Norvell went 8-13 in his first two seasons. So after the 2021 season, he sought reinforcements through the portal and added 13 transfers. Among them were Verse, running back Trey Benson, who rushed for at least 900 yards in his two seasons at Florida State and was a third-round pick, receiver Johnny Wilson, who became a big-play threat and now plays for the Philadelphia Eagles, linebacker Tatum Bethune, who led the team in tackles in 2023, and defensive back Greedy Vance, who became a valuable member of the secondary.
Those players helped the Seminoles go 10-3 in 2022 and put Norvell’s program on an upward trajectory. That offseason, Florida State signed a dozen more transfers. The headliners were receiver Keon Coleman and defensive tackle Braden Fiske, who both became All-ACC players and second-round NFL Draft picks. There was also South Carolina transfer Jaheim Bell, who finished third on the team with 503 receiving yards.
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Norvell’s transfer evaluations were very strong. In 2023, Florida State’s leading passer, rusher, top three receivers, tackler and sacks leader were all transfers. The Seminoles had a tremendous season and went 13-0 on their way to winning the ACC championship. They were shockingly left out of the College Football Playoff after their quarterback play declined once starter Jordan Travis suffered a serious lower left leg injury.
Norvell went back to the portal to replace many of the key pieces from the 2023 team. Florida State brought in former five-star recruit and Oregon State transfer DJ Uiagalelei to fill the void at quarterback. Uiagalelei suffered an injury on this throwing hand, but even before the injury, it was clear Norvell and his staff missed on that evaluation.
Florida State brought in four defensive line transfers this season, but the group has not lived up to the preseason hype. The Seminoles are 23rd nationally in sacks with 21 but rank 84th in yards per carry allowed (4.44).
Florida State is in this predicament due to a combination of missed transfer evaluations and a lack of development on the high school front.
In the case of Michigan State and USC, Walker and Williams were transcendent talents who elevated those rosters. There are cases when that can happen, but it can also mislead coaches or fans into believing the roster may be further along than it actually is.
USC’s 2023 squad was also a good example of how difficult it is to patch up your offensive line through the portal. Oklahoma started three transfers on the offensive line last weekend against Ole Miss and surrendered 10 sacks. That was a week after giving up nine sacks against South Carolina. The Sooners are learning this lesson the hard way. It takes patience, continuity and development at that position. There’s no other way around it.
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These programs also didn’t recruit relative to expectations. Michigan State is more of an evaluate and develop program, but Tucker arrived making bold predictions about raising the Spartans’ recruiting ceiling. He didn’t. Riley has had good classes at USC but hasn’t signed a truly elite one. Florida State has signed just one top-15 recruiting class in Norvell’s four full cycles as the head coach.
Some fans or commenters want to downplay recruiting because the transfer portal is another avenue to add talent. But recruiting and developing while balancing that with the portal additions is the best route at the moment.
And when a program dips into the portal heavily every offseason, it essentially resets the culture every year. That’s a fine line to walk. Sometimes you’ll hit and cross to the other side without issues. Other times, you’ll fall off the wire, like Florida State this year or USC last year.
There are programs that have relied on the portal that will be worth watching to see if they can buck this trend. Ole Miss is a portal-heavy program, and it’s sort of ebbed and flowed. In 2021, the Rebels went 10-3. They followed that with an 8-5 season in 2022 and then went 11-2 in 2023. They were expected to be a Playoff team in 2024 after going all in this offseason but sit at 6-2 and — barring an upset over Georgia — likely won’t make it.
Curt Cignetti brought 14 James Madison players with him to Indiana. Will he dip into the portal as much this upcoming offseason?
And what will Sanders do with Colorado’s roster after Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter leave?
All we know for certain is there will be more lessons learned along the way.
At least seven Florida State defenders were in a reasonable position to tackle Miami running back Damien Martinez late in Saturday night’s game.
Martinez was surrounded and should’ve been limited to a short gain. Instead, he kept his feet moving and simply out-efforted the Seminoles defense as he broke out of the pile and ran for 53 yards. It was one of the lasting images from FSU’s 36-14 loss to the Hurricanes — a defeat that sealed a losing season that has been weeks, if not months, in the making.
Advertisement
Florida State has been a massive disappointment on offense, defense and on the sidelines with Mike Norvell. A preseason top-10 team is now 1-7, and its remaining schedule still includes North Carolina, Notre Dame and Florida, along with Charleston Southern.
This comes after an offseason in which Norvell received widespread praise for how well he’s navigated the transfer portal and Florida State’s roster rebuild after the program cratered under Jimbo Fisher’s and Willie Taggart’s watch.
It’s true that Norvell might’ve utilized the portal better than any coach in the country as he guided FSU to 23 wins and one ACC championship over the past two seasons. There have been 12 Seminoles selected over the past three NFL Drafts, including 10 who were transfers identified by Norvell and his staff — headlined by edge rusher Jared Verse, who arrived from Albany and became an All-American and first-round pick.
It’s also true you should proceed with caution if you are a fan of a team that’s enjoying success this season due in large part to its work in the portal. We have yet to see a program sustain a high level of success following this model in this new era of roster building. It might happen, but the next example will be the first.
Florida State is just one case. What can we learn from the Seminoles and others?
2022: Michigan State
The transfer portal was a thing back in 2021, but roster movement was nowhere near as prevalent as it is now. Then-Spartans coach Mel Tucker was at the forefront of mass portal movement when he added 15 transfers ahead of Michigan State’s 2021 season.Among those additions, Michigan State found a starting left tackle (Jarrett Horst), a starting linebacker who notched 75 tackles (Quavaris Crouch), two starting defensive backs (Chester Kimbrough and Ronald Williams) and the headliner, Kenneth Walker III, who rushed for 1,636 yards and 18 touchdowns.
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Walker elevated everyone else around him, willed the Spartans to a win over eventual Big Ten champion Michigan, was a consensus All-American, finished sixth in Heisman Trophy voting and won the Doak Walker Award.
Michigan State went 11-2 and won the Peach Bowl that season after going 9-11 over the previous two years. It looked like a potential breakthrough season.
Tucker wasn’t as active following the 2021 season, but the Spartans still added nine transfers.
Michigan State tried to replace Walker by adding two transfer running backs in Jarek Broussard, who overlapped with Tucker at Colorado in 2019, and Jalen Berger, who transferred from Wisconsin. But neither could fill that void. Defensive back Ameer Speed posted 62 tackles and was a sixth-round pick in 2023. Linebacker Aaron Brule posted 94 tackles and nine sacks across two seasons with the Spartans.
The transfer class wasn’t nearly as impactful as the 2021 group. Michigan State opened the season as a preseason top-15 team, but its roster deficiencies were exposed in a Week 3 loss to Washington, and the Spartans finished 5-7.
Kenneth Walker rushed for 1,636 yards at Michigan State in 2021. (Rich Schultz / Getty Images)
2023: USC
Clay Helton was fired just two games into the 2021 season after he spent years on the hot seat. Recruiting fell off in the latter part of his tenure, as did the on-field product. The Trojans won just four games in 2021, and the roster was in bad shape.Lincoln Riley was hired in late November and immediately reshaped USC’s roster. In April 2021, the NCAA ruled that first-time transfers would have immediate eligibility after most had to sit out a season in prior years. USC also capitalized on an NCAA bylaw that allowed new coaches to basically process (read: cut) players out of the program up to a year after their hire.
So there were more transfers available, and Riley had an avenue to create the scholarship space needed.
Advertisement
Before Deion Sanders wildly flipped Colorado’s roster, Riley and USC were the poster boys for a massive roster overhaul. The Trojans added 19 transfers while 20 players from the previous regime transferred out.
The additions far outweighed the subtractions. USC orchestrated a stunning turnaround in 2022 as it won 11 games and nearly made the College Football Playoff.
No transfer had a bigger hand in that than quarterback Caleb Williams, who won the Heisman Trophy in 2022 and is arguably the best transfer quarterback of the portal era.
USC also added running back Travis Dye, who rushed for 1,271 yards and 16 touchdowns for Oregon in 2021, talented Oklahoma receiver Mario Williams, Colorado corner Mekhi Blackmon, Virginia offensive tackle Bobby Haskins, Arizona State linebacker Eric Gentry and, in the spring portal window, landed Biletnikoff Award winner and Pitt receiver Jordan Addison. All of those transfers played significant roles for the Trojans that season.
Even with a successful season, USC still had clear personnel deficiencies to address, so it hit the portal the following offseason. And with Williams back for 2023, USC was an attractive transfer destination.
The Trojans added three highly touted offensive line transfers (Emmanuel Pregnon, Michael Tarquin and Jarrett Kingston), four defensive linemen who were supposed to solidify the leaky run defense (Bear Alexander, Anthony Lucas, Jack Sullivan and Kyon Barrs), an All-Big 12 linebacker (Mason Cobb), the No. 2 receiver in the Pac-12 (Dorian Singer) and a talented running back from the SEC (MarShawn Lloyd).
In 2022, USC featured a strong offensive line that was built around veterans who spent several years playing together. The 2023 line featured those three transfers, and it was clear from the opening game the unit lacked chemistry. The O-line became the most disappointing part of the team and was consistently exploited by the better defenses.
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And aside from Alexander, none of the defensive linemen made a real impact, and some even fell completely out of the rotation. Cobb struggled in a bad defensive scheme. And on offense, Singer never really fit in. After he caught 66 passes for 1,105 yards and six scores at Arizona in 2022, he recorded just 24 receptions for 289 yards and three scores in one season at USC.
The portal class was ranked third nationally by 247Sports but was filled with missed evaluations from the coaching staff.
It was emblematic of USC’s humbling and embarrassing 2023 season. The Trojans were viewed as Pac-12 title favorites and Playoff contenders. Instead, they finished the regular season 7-5 after a 6-0 start.
2024: Florida State
It was always going to take some time for Norvell to rebuild Florida State after a downturn started toward the end of Fisher’s tenure. It only worsened during Taggart’s 21 games as the Seminoles coach.Norvell went 8-13 in his first two seasons. So after the 2021 season, he sought reinforcements through the portal and added 13 transfers. Among them were Verse, running back Trey Benson, who rushed for at least 900 yards in his two seasons at Florida State and was a third-round pick, receiver Johnny Wilson, who became a big-play threat and now plays for the Philadelphia Eagles, linebacker Tatum Bethune, who led the team in tackles in 2023, and defensive back Greedy Vance, who became a valuable member of the secondary.
Those players helped the Seminoles go 10-3 in 2022 and put Norvell’s program on an upward trajectory. That offseason, Florida State signed a dozen more transfers. The headliners were receiver Keon Coleman and defensive tackle Braden Fiske, who both became All-ACC players and second-round NFL Draft picks. There was also South Carolina transfer Jaheim Bell, who finished third on the team with 503 receiving yards.
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Norvell’s transfer evaluations were very strong. In 2023, Florida State’s leading passer, rusher, top three receivers, tackler and sacks leader were all transfers. The Seminoles had a tremendous season and went 13-0 on their way to winning the ACC championship. They were shockingly left out of the College Football Playoff after their quarterback play declined once starter Jordan Travis suffered a serious lower left leg injury.
Norvell went back to the portal to replace many of the key pieces from the 2023 team. Florida State brought in former five-star recruit and Oregon State transfer DJ Uiagalelei to fill the void at quarterback. Uiagalelei suffered an injury on this throwing hand, but even before the injury, it was clear Norvell and his staff missed on that evaluation.
Florida State brought in four defensive line transfers this season, but the group has not lived up to the preseason hype. The Seminoles are 23rd nationally in sacks with 21 but rank 84th in yards per carry allowed (4.44).
Florida State is in this predicament due to a combination of missed transfer evaluations and a lack of development on the high school front.
The lessons
So what can we learn from these programs? Well, for one, it’s hard to sustain success relying on the portal so heavily year after year. A program is just not going to consistently nail those evaluations. Good NFL front offices have plenty of missed evals on their record.In the case of Michigan State and USC, Walker and Williams were transcendent talents who elevated those rosters. There are cases when that can happen, but it can also mislead coaches or fans into believing the roster may be further along than it actually is.
USC’s 2023 squad was also a good example of how difficult it is to patch up your offensive line through the portal. Oklahoma started three transfers on the offensive line last weekend against Ole Miss and surrendered 10 sacks. That was a week after giving up nine sacks against South Carolina. The Sooners are learning this lesson the hard way. It takes patience, continuity and development at that position. There’s no other way around it.
Advertisement
These programs also didn’t recruit relative to expectations. Michigan State is more of an evaluate and develop program, but Tucker arrived making bold predictions about raising the Spartans’ recruiting ceiling. He didn’t. Riley has had good classes at USC but hasn’t signed a truly elite one. Florida State has signed just one top-15 recruiting class in Norvell’s four full cycles as the head coach.
Some fans or commenters want to downplay recruiting because the transfer portal is another avenue to add talent. But recruiting and developing while balancing that with the portal additions is the best route at the moment.
And when a program dips into the portal heavily every offseason, it essentially resets the culture every year. That’s a fine line to walk. Sometimes you’ll hit and cross to the other side without issues. Other times, you’ll fall off the wire, like Florida State this year or USC last year.
There are programs that have relied on the portal that will be worth watching to see if they can buck this trend. Ole Miss is a portal-heavy program, and it’s sort of ebbed and flowed. In 2021, the Rebels went 10-3. They followed that with an 8-5 season in 2022 and then went 11-2 in 2023. They were expected to be a Playoff team in 2024 after going all in this offseason but sit at 6-2 and — barring an upset over Georgia — likely won’t make it.
Curt Cignetti brought 14 James Madison players with him to Indiana. Will he dip into the portal as much this upcoming offseason?
And what will Sanders do with Colorado’s roster after Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter leave?
All we know for certain is there will be more lessons learned along the way.
