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Both Teams in ACC Championship Game Won With Extreme Approach to Transfers

By David Glenn

 

In 2018, the NCAA created the transfer portal. In 2021, the organization’s member schools voted to revise its player eligibility rules to allow — for the first time in its history, which dates to 1906 — virtually all first-time transfers to be eligible immediately at their new school.

In 2023, the massive impacts of those two simple but revolutionary changes are virtually everywhere you look in college athletics.

In men’s basketball, for example, the Atlantic Coast Conference experienced something truly unprecedented in March. For the first time in the league’s 70-year history, a majority of its very best players — six of the top 11 vote-getters on the postseason All-ACC team — were major college transfers. Furthermore, when Miami advanced to the Final Four for the first time in program history, three of the Hurricanes’ four best players were major college transfers.

In football, this Saturday’s ACC championship game (8 pm, ABC) at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte will be a contest between 12-0 Florida State and 10-2 Louisville, the two conference members that utilized the transfer portal most successfully last year.

Just two years ago, FSU coach Mike Norvell seemed to be trending toward the hot seat in Tallahassee, after posting 3-6 and 5-7 records during his first two seasons with the Seminoles. About one year ago, Cardinals coach Jeff Brohm had just completed his sixth and final season at Purdue; he was introduced at Louisville, his alma mater, on Dec. 8.

For different reasons, both coaches decided to hit the transfer portal — hard.

“We’re looking for the right fit,” Norvell said last year. “Now maybe some positions we’re looking to get a little older or more experienced guys (from the transfer portal) that can come and pair with some of the younger players who are getting developed.

“But the message is the same for everybody: You’re going to come in, and you’re going to get an opportunity. … That’s what I tell every transfer and high school recruit. I try to be as transparent as possible of the expectation of being part of this team. We’re not going to have just individuals. We’re building a team to be able to win a championship.”

After a 10-3 season, a bowl victory and a #10 final national ranking in 2022, the Seminoles appear poised to do exactly that — win a championship. It’s been a full decade since FSU’s last national title (2013), and it’s been nine years since its last ACC title (2014).

Now, thanks in large part to the transfer portal, they have at least a chance to accomplish both of those things in the coming weeks.

FSU’s most frequently used starters on offense this season illustrate the truly revolutionary and rampant nature of the Seminoles’ use of the transfer portal. On an 11-man unit, 10 of the team’s regular starters came from the portal. Among those 10 incoming transfers, seven have earned All-ACC honors for their current team.

2023 Florida State Offense

(10 of 11 Starters = Transfers)

  • QB — Jordan Travis*^, Sr. (2019 Louisville transfer); minimal playing time with Cardinals
  • RB — Trey Benson*, Jr. (2022 Oregon transfer); minimal playing time with Ducks
  • WR — Keon Coleman*, Jr. (2023 Michigan State transfer); third-team All-Big Ten for Spartans
  • WR — Johnny Wilson*, Jr. (2022 Arizona State transfer); only three starts with Sun Devils
  • TE — Jaheim Bell*, Jr. (2023 South Carolina transfer); top receiving TE in Gamecocks history
  • TE — Kyle Morlock, Jr. (2023 Shorter transfer); two-time Division Two All-American
  • LT — Bless Harris, Sr. (2022 Lamar transfer); left tackle starter for FCS program
  • LG — Casey Roddick*, Sr. (2023 Colorado transfer); three-year starter, captain for Buffaloes
  • RG — D’Mitri Emmanuel*, Sr. (2022 Charlotte transfer); 24 straight starts (2019-21) for 49ers
  • RT — Emmanuel Byers, Jr. (2023 UTEP transfer); first-team All-CUSA, three-year starter for Miners

*—All-ACC selection during time with Seminoles

^—injured (backup Tate Rodemaker will start against Louisville)

Impressively, while many of the Seminoles’ successful transfers were All-Americans or all-conference performers at their previous school, essentially removing one often-challenging aspect (talent evaluation) of the typical recruiting process, some others were not stars at their previous school.

Two-time All-ACC running back Trey Benson, for example, missed the entire 2020 season at Oregon because of injury, then rushed only six times for 22 yards and a touchdown as a redshirt freshman in 2021. Sixth-year senior quarterback Jordan Travis (now injured), a two-time All-ACC player who received first-team honors this year over North Carolina star Drake Maye, barely played at Louisville before developing into a four-year starter for the Seminoles.

On defense, too, FSU has relied heavily on transfers, including five starters: tackle Braden Fiske (2023 Western Michigan transfer), end Jared Verse (2022 Albany transfer), linebacker Tatum Bethune (2022 UCF transfer) and cornerbacks Fentrell Cypress II (2023 Virginia transfer) and Jarrian Jones (2020 Mississippi State transfer).

From that group, all but Jones were all-conference performers at their previous school, and all five players received All-ACC honors this week — Verse on the first team, Fiske on the second team, Bethune on the third team, and Cypress and Jones as honorable mentions.

Louisville, meanwhile, had seven players who earned first-, second- or third-team All-ACC honors this season. Five of them were major college transfers: first-team running back Jawhar Jordan (Syracuse), first-team center Bryan Hudson (Virginia Tech), second-team wide receiver Jamari Thrash (Georgia State), third-team quarterback Jack Plummer (Purdue/California) and third-team safety Devin Neal (Baylor).

(featured image: AP Photo/Ben McKeown, File)

David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.

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