Ceiling for portal-heavy teams in expanded CFP era: Why traditional roster building is necessary to win title

Once Ohio State and Notre Dame had won their semifinal matchups in the College Football Playoff, there were plenty of pointed observations about the matchup and what it might have said about the sport in the modern era. But to get caught up in conversations of conference strength and what leagues may or may not have been as represented is to miss another unique thread that tied Ohio State and Notre Dame to each other in opposition from many of the other powers in college football. 

While modern transfer rules and NIL have created more roster fluidity than the sport has ever seen, the two teams that played for the national championship did not — especially in comparison to their peers — build their roster through the transfer portal. That might catch some by surprise since the Buckeyes had a high-profile transfer at quarterback (Will Howard), running back (Quinshon Judkins) and safety (Caleb Downs), while Notre Dame had former Duke star Riley Leonard under center along with multiple other starters from the portal. But in terms of transfer volume, Ohio State and Notre Dame are on the lower end of power-conference teams competing at the highest levels. 

Ohio State took seven transfers prior to 2024, nine transfers ahead of 2023 and just four transfers going into 2022. Notre Dame’s numbers are nearly identical, taking nine transfers ahead of 2024, seven going into 2023 and just four prior to 2022. 

That’s 20 incoming transfers over the last three offseasons combined for the two teams that made it farther than any other other in the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff. Meanwhile, there have been 37 different teams that have added at least 20 transfers in a single offseason in the same span, according to the 247Sports Transfer Portal database. Ole Miss and Louisville, for example, have done it twice with more than 20 transfers added to the rosters going into both 2023 and 2024. 

So what does Ohio State and Notre Dame’s success in the College Football Playoff say about modern roster construction? Can a team that’s heavily reliant on the transfer portal win it all in the 12-team era?

We gathered data from the last three years of transfer portal activity at the power conference level, via 247Sports, and tied it to the on-field success each team saw the following fall. Oregon State and Washington State were included as well because of the previous Pac-12 alignment, and both Memphis and Tulane from the AAC were added into the fold due to their portal activity. It gave us a 72-team sample set from which we will try to draw some conclusions on what the transfer portal can, and cannot, do to help a team win in the modern era. 

Defining a ‘portal team’

The average transfer portal class at the power conference level over the last three years is about 11 or 12 players with the numbers across the board increasing from 2022 to 2024. In 2022, USC in Year 1 with Lincoln Riley led all power conference programs with 20 incoming transfers, while Ole Miss had 19, but most power conference teams had less than 15 portal additions. By 2024 we saw 26 different teams bringing on 20 or more portal additions, a sign of the changing times and landscape as it pertains to above-board NIL and the freedom of movement for players. 

So let’s call any team with 20-plus portal additions a “portal team.” Let’s also make sure that we draw a line between the number of portal adds and where a team ranks in the 247Sports Transfer Portal Team Rankings. Because while Ohio State had just seven portal players added to the roster in 2024, the per-player rating contributed to a top-10 portal class ranking. It’s a top-10 portal class, sure, but the Buckeyes were not a team built by the portal. The same could be said for CFP semifinalist Texas, which has had a top-six portal class ranking each of the last two seasons but has not taken more than 12 players in a single year from the portal. Steve Sarkisian’s program is much closer to the average power conference program in terms of transfer acquisitions, utilizing the portal to supplement a strong high school recruiting operation for above-average results. 

A necessary tool for new head coaches 

The most important and impactful thing the transfer portal can do is provide an influx of talent for a new coach. More than half of the instances of a team taking 20-plus transfers came from a coach in either their first or second season, including 13 of the 15 biggest power conference portal classes from the last two years. 

Deion Sanders and Colorado have been college football’s grand experiment when it comes to the transfer portal, skewing the numbers with 95 transfers added over the last two years, according to 247Sports. Sanders brought NFL talent with him from Jackson State but also had to replenish a roster that had been beaten down across a 1-11 season prior to his arrival. Not every new coach faces the kind of roster situation that Sanders had or chooses to be as aggressive with a top-to-bottom roster transformation, but the last two seasons have seen unprecedented portal activity from new coaches facing similar situations. 

Curt Cignetti’s portal moves were not dissimilar to Deion Sanders when he arrived at Indiana, because while his portal total (31) was much less than the Buffs, he was bringing players and staff from James Madison to help set the tone in Bloomington. Louisville coach Jeff Brohm also found the modern portal rules advantageous to building a team that could hit the ground running upon his arrival; he brought in 25 players from the portal ahead of Year 1 in 2023 then another 32 going into 2024. 

Arizona State was in all kinds of roster trouble as a result of NCAA violations from the previous regime, so Kenny Dillingham had to get 31 players from the portal ahead of his Year 1 in 2023 and then another 30 prior to 2024. SMU coach Rhett Lashlee had some of the biggest portal classes in the country in 2022 and 2023 as he got his feet set in Dallas and still had a 20-plus player portal haul in 2024. 

And if you haven’t picked up on it yet, these coaches have found great success with aggressive portal activity in the early years of their tenure. Indiana, Arizona State and SMU just made the College Football Playoff; Louisville played for an ACC title in 2023; and while Colorado had a rocky Year 1, the Buffs finished tied for first in the Big 12 standings at the end of 2024. 

So what can the portal do for you? The portal can speed up the process of contending for conference titles and College Football Playoff spots. If you wonder why it seems like fans are more restless than ever to see their new coach deliver big results, it’s because of these examples where coaches have flipped the fortunes of a program faster than the reasonable expectations from previous eras. 

The Portal King 

While many coaches have made their claim to this title, we’re going to keep Lane Kiffin on the throne as the transfer portal king of college football. Kiffin’s commitment to the transfer portal has given the Rebels some of the largest classes compared to their peers, but he’s also delivered a seemingly steady level of on-field results that are quickly making him one of the successful coaches in Ole Miss history. Using the portal to replenish a decimated roster is sensible, but Ole Miss has added dozens of newcomers to the locker room every offseason and enters 2025 coming off back-to-back double-digit win seasons. 

According to 247Sports, Ole Miss has brought in 19, 23 and 26 players from the portal each of the last three offseasons to go with high school recruiting classes of 18, 16 and 22 players. When that much of the roster is changing over each offseason and yet the results have largely stayed the same — Kiffin is 44-18 across his five years at Ole Miss, has never finished below .500 and has three years finishing inside the top-11 of the AP Top 25 poll — then it’s fair to claim that the Rebels have this portal thing figured out better than most. 

The question for Kiffin now, and the one that may come later for the other portal-reliant coaches, is whether double-digit wins is enough. Lane Kiffin is the portal king and Ole Miss might be the poster child of the portal team, but does the Rebels’ level of success mark the apparent ceiling for what a “portal team” can accomplish?

The portal can’t win a national championship 

Indiana, Arizona State and SMU made the expanded College Football Playoff with portal-heavy rosters, while both Ole Miss and South Carolina were in the mix for at-large bids late into the season after taking 20-plus transfers in the offseason.    

But that was not the makeup of the roster for a majority of the CFP teams in 2024and certainly not the profile of the teams who had the most success in the bracket. Eight of the 12 teams in the 2024-25 College Football Playoff took 12 or less transfers from the portal heading into the season, and all four of the CFP semifinalists fall into that same category. 

The high end of that count, Texas (12), was an outlier for the Longhorns and a result of a massive NFL Draft exodus from the Big 12 title team in 2023. Georgia, too, was on the higher end of its recent history but still only took 11 transfers, while Ohio State, Notre Dame and Penn State were consistent with single-digit portal additions each of the three offseasons between 2022-24. 

In that we find the DNA of a true national championship contender as it relates to the transfer portal. Programs like Georgia, Ohio State and Texas recruit out of high school at an elite level then utilize the transfer portal to supplement their roster in specific areas. You can supercharge a depleted roster with transfer portal additions to get instant results, but surviving the ups and downs of what’s become a 15-17-game college football season requires the kind of competitive depth and cohesiveness that can only be built with year-over-year recruiting success. 

There is a reason why Bud Elliott’s Blue Chip Ratio remains undefeated in predicting the national champion even as the sport has underdone changes to its postseason format and transfer rules. Winning college football’s ultimate prize requires a program to recruit, out of high school, more blue-chips (four- and five-star prospects) than non-blue-chips over a four-year window. There is a minimum threshold of size, speed, athleticism and talent that needs to be in the building already before a coaching staff goes portal shopping if you want to win it all. And that threshold, according to the BCR, is 50% or more blue chips signed in a four-year span. 

Now, I have long argued against the national championship being the end-all, be-all in college football. The sport is too robust and occupies too unique of a place in the hearts of American sports fans to be as exclusionary as the national title picture is on an annual basis. But if we want to consider the ceiling for a team that has relied heavily on the transfer portal to build a roster, we must consider the cost when it comes to high school recruiting. 

Because while a portal team can make the College Football Playoff, an absence of in-house, home-grown, recruited-and-developed talent makes it highly unlikely that group can win the national championship. 

A hybrid model in the title hunt

If there is one true hybrid model that’s operating at the top of the sport — it’s Oregon. The Ducks took 10 transfers ahead of Dan Lanning’s first season in 2022, had a 16-player portal class in 2023 and added 14 transfers heading into 2024. Those numbers are average, if not slightly above average, for power conference schools, and the quality of those classes has been reflected with top-10 portal class rankings each of the last two years. 

But while Oregon doesn’t have the single-digit portal classes shared by a majority of their CFP peers, Lanning is going head-to-head with the big dogs on the high school recruiting trail and bringing in talent that gives the Ducks a solid in-house foundation each season. Lanning’s first three high school recruiting classes ranked 16th, 9th and 4th nationally, according to 247Sports. Earlier this month, he wrapped up a 20-player class for the 2025 cycle that 247Sports has No. 2 nationally, and the early work on 2026 suggests it will be yet another top-10 class. 

Oregon is too unique to be copied, but for programs that don’t have the built-in advantages of an Ohio State or Georgia, there is something to be learned from Lanning’s hybrid model. He’s stacking elite high school recruiting classes while also supplementing with top portal talent and finding ways to gel both approaches successfully as evidenced by his 35-6 record over the last three years with a Big Ten title and a CFP appearance. 

Future of the portal 

Like everything in college sports these days, the future of the transfer portal is murky, so it’s unknown how much longer these standards will apply. But we have seen some trends that indicate an adjustment from the transfer portal explosion of last offseason. We still have one more spring transfer portal window to go, but at this moment, 247Sports has noticeably less teams taking on 20-plus transfers and most of the largest classes are coming from coaches in their first or second year on the job. The Portal King is still at it; Ole Miss currently has 22 transfers in a class that ranks No. 2 nationally in the 247Sports Transfer Team Rankings, but the median and mean seem to drifting back in the other direction after increasing year-over-year from 2022 to 2024. 

One reason for that is an increased commitment across the power conferences to roster retention. Instead of spending money on portal shopping, there is an increased emphasis on keeping a roster together and with the House settlement soon bringing millions of dollars to all players we have seen some of the mid-level power conference schools be able to keep players from getting poached by a bigger bank. The level of talent in the transfer portal is not quite what some personnel staffers expected it might be, which was a disappointment for those looking to buy but a sign that the pendulum is swinging the other way when it comes to roster continuity. 

If schools are doing a better job of holding on to talented players, and the number of true difference-makers is lessening in the transfer portal, it’s only going to cement the ceiling for portal-built team. Programs like Ohio State, Notre Dame, Texas and Georgia are still mostly constructing their rosters by stacking high school recruiting classes, and as long as those teams are the ones contending for national championships that will be the map for how to make it to the top of the mountain in college football.