Building a roster in college football has changed dramatically over the past few years. Whereas the exercise of recruiting was mostly a one-and-done concept for athletes and college programs, the process of roster-building has another stage these days – the transfer portal. It has become a sort of potential free agency for young athletes. Now three years into the relatively new college football offseason system of the transfer portal, it’s clear that some programs have employed it to great success.
BetMississippi.com, where you can check out the latest in Mississippi sports betting, used On3.com’s Transfer Portal team rankings from 2022 to 2024 and combined them to analyze which programs that have used the transfer portal the best over the past three offseasons. Note that the 2024 On3 Index Score rankings are as of Jan. 10 at noon Eastern. Here are the results:
Most Successful Transfer Portal College Football Programs
Ole Miss Rates High In Transfer Portal
Fans of Ole Miss will be pleased to note that Mississippi is rated No. 2 in the portal performance evaluations, and the evidence of the program’s effective use of the system is obvious. With head coach Lane Kiffin aggressive about the portal, Ole Miss finished the 2023 season No. 9 in the final Associated Press College Football poll, the program’s highest finish in the AP rankings since 1969 (No. 8).
Mississippi was 11-2 (its first 11-victory season ever) with a win over Penn State in the Peach Bowl, and only SEC rivals Georgia and Alabama beat Kiffin’s squad. And according to On3.com, as far as the transfer portal, only Louisville had a better combined index score from 2022 through 2024 with a score of 171.
Ole Miss had scores of 71 in 2022, 41 in 2023 and 54 in 2024, for a combined score of 166 on the On3 Transfer Portal Index. Also prominent in its use of the transfer portal is Colorado with head coach Deion Sanders. “Prime Time” became the Buffaloes’ head coach in 2023 and the program’s transfer portal performance took an immediate turn from minus-18 in 2022 to 80 in 2023 and 87 in 2024, for a combined score of 149 on the On3 index.
The rest of the top 10 in the On3 Index (with combined score over three seasons): Southern California (108), Arkansas (74), Wisconsin (71), South Carolina (67), Kentucky (66), Florida State (58) and UCLA (55).
With the college football world just digesting Michigan’s win over Washington in the CFP National Championship game and the retirement of Nick Saban at Alabama, the early odds for the 2024 national title are available. DraftKings Sportsbook has Ole Miss at +1600 odds, which is eighth among all programs. The favorite is Georgia at +450.
