There's been a lot of back and forth on here about whether the amount of transfers we have are unusual or not. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to pull the data down from 247 and find out some raw numbers. The answer is, yeah we're definitely on the high end for transfers out, being second only to PSU. That count includes Deshawn McClease who apparently is staying put after all, but that doesn't make a big impact to our placement in the rankings.
I think it'll be interesting to check this again in a few months and see where the transfers end up. Right now the majority of the transfers are still waiting to find a home.
Top 25 For Players Transferring Out:
Penn State 13
Virginia Tech 12
Arkansas 11
UCLA 10
Arizona 8
SMU 8
Illinois 8
Oklahoma State 7
South Alabama 7
South Carolina 7
Texas 7
USC 7
Texas A&M 6
Tennessee 6
Rutgers 6
Nebraska 6
Duke 6
Auburn 5
Indiana 5
Vanderbilt 5
Georgia 4
Michigan 4
Connecticut 4
Minnesota 4
Louisville 4
Top 10 for Players Transferring In:
TBD 169
Miami 6
Oregon State 5
UCF 4
Missouri 3
Illinois 3
Rutgers 3
Maryland 3
N.C. State 2
TCU 2
Comments
Well of course the big dogs are at the top.
the most worrisome are OkSt. and Penn state, everyone else had head coaching changes, but those two haven't. Those players are who the coaches recruited.
As much as we like to dog PSU here, they aren't worried about all the transfers. It's a direct result of their team recruiting at a new level. Their portal entries have been largely backups who expect to be passed by their younger players and incoming recruits. The WR leaving is a bit of a head scracther, but their attrition is largely due to them genuinely changing their roster dramatically through recruiting.
So same thing for Savoy, Cunningham, Beckett, maybe JJ?
I feel that way about those guys. The only ones that were ever concerning to me were Kumah and McClease (no longer transferring) because they were slated to be major contributors and it was clearly linked to some locker room division. Even then I feel way better about the locker room situation after we heard the team meeting was a major success and united the team.
TBD gonna get the NCAA all up in their business for scholarship limit violations
I almost made that a "?", which is actually what 247 uses on their website. Maybe a missed humor opportunity.
Based off this list the, "gotta get your kind of guys" in the system is apparent. Out of the 17 schools listed with 6 or more transfers, a whopping 14 of the schools have hired a new coach since 2016. Duke, OK State, and Penn State are the ones that have had their coach before 2016.
Based on this information I would love to see it broken down further and see how many of these transfers were recruited by the previous regime.
It took almost a whole decade to be ranked #2 in football again...
🤪
Wasn't the last time in '99? So 2 decades?
No we were #2 in 2007 for a while too I think.
And #1 in the computers to close out the season
2007 was the year that #2 was the cursed ranking. As soon as a team got there they lost. Except for BC in the Fuck Matt Ryan game. We would have been #2 going into the bowl games had we won that game. However, we topped out at #3 and were sent to the Orange Bowl.
Out of curiosity, I would love to see the average star rating of the transfers for each school.
Wow, that is really disheartening to see.
I don't give a frog's fat ass who else is at the top of the list with us, that's a huge chunk of our roster that came to Blacksburg to play football and decided they wanted to be somewhere else.
If I'm a recruiter from UVA or UNC, I'm showing this list to every recruit we're going head-to-head with and asking "You sure you really want to go THERE?"
I think it mostly represents players who are seeing their role on the team diminish, and don't want to stick it out in an effort to get it back. Hate to break it to them, but that's life in the big city, pal, regardless of whether its sports, work, or in social circles, someone is always looking to take over your role and reduce your significance, and its your job to hold them off and/or beat them down. I think this transfer portal will lose its luster eventually, once the transfers realize the grass isn't always greener.
I think you are probably right that players around the country will eventually figure out that transferring to another program won't always improve their situation.
But why are so many players specifically from VT deciding to bail?
Are you serious? The last two Heisman winners were transfers. Transferring isn't going away it's only going to increase.
TBD is clearly doing something right on the recruiting trail. Just goes to show what you can do when you're not being held back by a G5 coach and G5 support staff.