The Portal - impact on Top 15 AP teams
Earlier this morning, I was channel grazing and a segment on the Big Ten Network with Dinardo and Meyer caught my eye. The topic was - The Portal. I believe there's a correlation between talent / development and performance, and found the data associated with that conversation pretty interesting.
So, what was it? There were six teams in the top 14 of the AP poll that had three or more portal players as starters. One could argue about the rationale for using the portal so much - and, the two most visible examples are Ole Miss (Kiffin may have difficulty signing the highest level prospects out of high school), and first year coaches, an example of which is USC with Riley bringing in a number of starters through the portal.
These are the AP rankings of those teams and the number of portal players who are starters. Other AP teams - ranked 14 through 25 are also have several portal starters - I just couldn't remember them all, and IIRC, of those teams ranked 14 to 25 in this weeks AP pool, the only team with more than four portal transfer starters was James Madison.
Here's the list.
USC: AP 7, 11 portal players are starters. That is half of the USC starting squad
Ole Miss: AP 9, 10 portal players are starters. Kiffin going after players who may not make the two deep on other very competitive teams.
UCLA: AP 11, 7 portal starters.
Oregon: AP 12, 7 portal starters.
TCU, AP 13, 4 portal starters.
Bama: AP 3, 3 portal starters. This one surprised me.
(As a point of reference. Michigan is AP 5 with 1 portal starter, and (IIRC) the Bucks are AP 2, with no portal starters.)
My two perspectives. First, the three Pac-12 teams in this group. That may shed some light about the conference. Second, despite how effective Bama has been at recruiting for over a decade, and their overall team talent - Saban is still using the portal to fill in his roster - and, with three portal players starting for Bama, candidly, that number seems high to me.
It seems like first year head coaches may utilize the portal more heavily to establish their foundation, and the portal isn't going anywhere.
Your thoughts?
October 13th, 2022 at 12:24 PM ^
pooh,
Your point is both fair and interesting. Bama surprises me in this way - they've been extremely effective for a decade in recruiting. Their individual signing classes and overall team talent are very rarely not 1st or 2nd.
And, despite this success on the recruiting trail, this season - it appears they don't have much depth at the QB position, and have gone to an RB transfer to lead that position group.
October 13th, 2022 at 3:03 PM ^
Are graduate transfers still considered as portal? Ohio State has Tanner McCallister who started at Oklahoma State last year and now he’s starting at safety for the Buckeyes. Why doesn’t he count?