The college football season isn’t over yet and won’t be for several weeks, but the sport’s offseason, if you can even call it that, has been in full swing for quite some time — hirings, firings and players announcing they’re returning or leaving or heading to the NFL. 

Many players already know where they’re headed, having worked out deals through agents with new schools. Everyone can begin making it official Jan. 2, the official start of college football’s transfer window.

Unlike in previous years, there is just one transfer window. Players will not have the opportunity to change teams later in the spring. The NCAA approved the change to a single window in October, hoping to bring a little more stability to the sport — if such a thing is possible in college football.

MORE: College football transfer portal tracker for Duke, North Carolina and North Carolina State

Although schools are limited to spending $20.5 million to directly pay athletes, the cost to lure and keep any individual player continues to rise, especially for quarterbacks. ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported that the market for top quarterbacks could reach $5 million. 

Duke’s Darian Mensah was among the highest-paid quarterbacks this season, at a reported $4 million. Mensah, the ACC leader in passing yards and passing touchdowns in 2025, has said he would return to the Blue Devils for the 2026 season. 

There are several high-profile quarterbacks who intend to transfer, including TCU’s Josh Hoover, Nebraska’s Dylan Raiola, Cincinnati’s Brendan Sorsby. NC State’s CJ Bailey could add to the list. High-profile programs like Indiana, Miami and LSU are in the market for quarterback transfers.

Despite the change to a single window, it’s not perfect. The portal is open from Jan. 2 to Jan. 16, while the College Football Playoff is happening. It closes before the national championship game. Players on those two teams can enter the portal from Jan. 20 through Jan. 24. 

Players need only to enter the portal during the window. They don’t have to choose their school during that time. However, the school calendar plays a role if players want to participate in spring practice.

Players have been entering the portal – not a physical place, just a NCAA database — since the regular season wrapped up in late November.

More than a dozen North Carolina players, for example, plan to transfer from Bill Belichick’s program, including leading tackler Khmori House, standout defensive end Tyler Thompson and running back Davion Gause.

NC State running back Hollywood Smothers, an All-ACC first-team selection, skipped the team’s bowl victory over Memphis and plans to transfer or enter the NFL Draft.

Coaches signed new recruiting classes in early December without knowing exactly what spots they might need to fill.

“You take your high school class based on who you know is leaving the program, like we’ll do our seniors and things like that,” NC State coach Dave Doeren said in December. “That’s where the portal now has to supplement. You may have more attrition than you expected at a certain position and you didn’t sign as many high school players as you needed.”

Coaches led the push from the old system which had a transfer window in December (one of the busiest months of the calendar for coaches) and another in April after most programs completed spring ball. Some pushed for the single window to be in the spring, and the NCAA initially adopted a 10-day period, before extending it to 15 days.

“Every college coach would tell you that our calendar is just not in sync with the demands of what’s happening in our sport,” Doeren said. “We need to get our arms around that to make our jobs a little bit easier from a planning standpoint.”

The new single window does help with that. Rosters are locked in early in the year.

UNC made heavy use of the post-spring portal in 2025, after the mid-December 2024 hiring of head coach Bill Belichick, and lost several key players as well. Many programs have stopped holding traditional spring games, in part due to concerns that other coaches could scout those games and try to pluck players from their roster.

“The best thing about this year is that on Jan. 17, the portal will close and you’ll be able to build your team, knowing that when you go to spring ball, that is your team,” UNC general manager Michael Lombardi said. “Knowing that when you go through your offseason program, that is your team.”

With Ole Miss’ Sugar Bowl victory over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, Lane Kiffin will receive another bonus. Per the terms of his contract at LSU, he will get the $500,000 he would have gotten from the Rebels for advancing to the College Football Playoff semifinal.

Kiffin was already set to receive a payout as a result of Ole Miss’ first-round win over Tulane. That set him up for a $250,000 payday, which was the amount he would have received from the school if he was coaching in the game. Now, that figure will go up.

After Kiffin’s high-profile departure for LSU, Pete Golding took over as Ole Miss’ full-time head coach. But the Tigers said they would include “ancillary benefits” in Kiffin’s deal with the Rebels, and that means a $500,000 payout because his former program is advancing in the CFP.

Kiffin’s high-profile departure for LSU came after Ole Miss took down Mississippi State to complete the first 11-win regular season in program history. It also helped the Rebels virtually secure a spot in the College Football Playoff, and they hosted the first-round game on Saturday.

Per the terms of Kiffin’s contract at Ole Miss, there would be two more escalators if the Rebels keep going in the CFP. His payout would increase to $750,000 if they advance to the national championship and go up to $1 million if Ole Miss wins it all. LSU vowed to pay that same amount after Kiffin’s departure prior to the postseason.

“Coach will be entitled to receive a payment in an amount equal to the amount Coach would have been entitled to receive had he remained Head Coach at Coach’s immediate prior employer and coached the prior employer’s football team through the 2025-26 CFP,” Kiffin’s contract at LSU reads. “… If applicable, the payment under this section may be paid from affiliated foundation funds and shall be paid within 30 days following the prior employer’s team being eliminated from the 2025-26 CFP.”

Ole Miss takes down Georgia in thrilling Sugar Bowl

Ole Miss and Georgia square off in a thriller at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on Thursday. The two teams combined to score 30 points in the fourth quarter as the Rebels rallied to take down the Bulldogs, 39-34.

Trinidad Chambliss had a monster day, completing 30 of 46 passes for 362 yards and two touchdowns. Harrison Wallace III also had a career night, hauling in nine receptions for 156 yards and a touchdown. De’Zhaun Stribling also had a big performance with seven receptions for 122 yards.

For Golding, it marks a second straight victory as head coach after taking over for Lane Kiffin. Ole Miss will now get ready to take on Miami in the Fiesta Bowl.

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PASADENA, Ca. — The singing starts early in the fourth quarter of the Rose Bowl, where the clouds are rising above the San Gabriel Mountains and the No. 1 Indiana Hoosiers are just destroying No. 9 Alabama. This is a 2025 College Football Playoff quarterfinal, serious business, but the IU football crowd has been having a blast, and they know what to do when this stadium in Southern California starts playing Bloomington’s John Mellencamp over the loudspeakers.

The Texas Tech Red Raiders are currently trailing Oregon 13-0 in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals, putting a loaded team on the brink of elimination. Given how bad the offense has looked for this team, the fanbase is already moving on to the offseason, as even with a comeback win in this game, Texas Tech isn’t good enough on offense to win the National Championship.

The biggest flaw with this offense seems to be the play of their quarterback, Behren Morton, who’s had a brutal day with 3 turnovers early in the 4th quarter. Given the fact that Behren Morton is out of eligibility, Texas Tech needs a new quarterback, and the fans are swinging for the fences.

Texas Tech fans are begging for Cody Campbell to pay Brendan Sorsby

On Friday, the Transfer Portal in college football will open, and Texas Tech fans are hoping that Cody Campbell and the Red Raiders spend big to continue building up this roster. The overwhelming biggest wish by the fanbase and outsiders is quarterback Brendan Sorsby.

While Oregon will advance if the score holds, everyone believes whichever quarterback Texas Tech ends up adding is the true big winner.

The members of the media even seemingly believe that Brendan Sorsby is destined to be a Red Raider.

Cody Campbell specifically is being begged by the fans to go improve this team on offense, especially at quarterback.

It’ll now become interesting to see where Texas Tech and Cody Campbell look to find their quarterback in the Transfer Portal. Backup QB Will Hammond showed a ton of promise, but his season ending injury may change the plans at quarterback.

Brendan Sorsby is ranked as the top quarterback in the Transfer Portal in our latest Transfer Portal Quarterback Rankings. Between his experience in the Big 12, his talent level, and the fact that his girlfriend now plays volleyball at Texas Tech, the pairing seems like a perfect fit, but both sides will need to lock the deal in.

The transfer portal market is going up across the board, at every position, in every conference, and there’s little reason to believe it will slow down anytime soon. Just like professional sports, once one player gets paid, the market resets. The next wave of players measures itself against that number, believes it’s worth more, and pushes the standard even higher.

College football has officially entered that phase.

When the transfer portal opens Jan. 2, it will usher in what could be the most aggressive and expensive portal cycle the sport has ever seen. With the spring portal window eliminated in favor of a single winter period that runs from Jan. 2 through Jan. 16, the urgency has never been higher. Programs no longer have a second chance to fix mistakes, replace losses, or wait out the market.

This winter portal may look less like traditional college football and more like NFL free agency but with more chaos.

Spend Early or Miss Out

The expectation across the sport is clear: the best players will come off the board immediately and for big money. This is nothing new in the sports world because typically the services of the top players: a) in high demand and b) get contacted earlier because they dictate the market for the others after.

““People are going to spend out of the gate — like immediately — your top guys, your best guys, are going to go quick,” said a Big Ten general manager. “Then it’s the rest of them that are asking for money, but at some point they’re going to come down a little bit because the money has already been spent.””

Big Ten general manager

A year ago, there was widespread belief that this offseason would bring a correction. The passing of the House settlement, the introduction of the College Sports Commission as an enforcement arm, and the implementation of a $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap were all supposed to cool off the market.

The idea was simple: with stricter NIL oversight and limits on revenue sharing, teams could no longer double-dip between unlimited collective money and school-funded compensation. Prices, many thought, would stabilize or even decline. That hasn’t happened.

For a variety of reasons, the market has instead continued to climb. What began as college athletes not being paid at all turned into NIL opportunities based on name, image, and likeness. Now, schools themselves can directly allocate money to players, effectively paying salaries. It’s no wonder these college players are staying school longer when some get paid even more than if they were to go pro.

It’s a full 180-degree swing from where the sport was less than a decade ago.

New NIL Price of a Starter

The numbers that could come out of this cycle make that shift impossible to ignore.

““I feel like the average starter this cycle — the sort of line you have to hit — is $600,000,” said one SEC general manager. “I feel like last year starters in our conference were $300,000. Now it feels like starters are more like $600,000.””

SEC general manager

That’s not a superstar figure. That’s the baseline.

Quarterbacks, edge rushers, offensive tackles, and elite skill players are pushing well beyond that number. Depth players are commanding deals that would have qualified as “starter money” just one cycle ago. Every position group is affected, and every negotiation starts from a higher floor.

Arkansas Can’t Afford to Fall Behind

Arkansas football has reached a crossroads. New head coach Ryan Silverfield and athletic director Hunter Yurachek have both spoken publicly about the importance of having the necessary NIL resources to build and sustain a competitive roster.

Words are a start, but action has to follow.

Yurachek doesn’t have to write the checks himself, but he does have to empower the coaching staff, the collective, and the infrastructure to compete at market value. If the administration hesitates or tries to bargain-shop in a luxury market, the results will be the same as they’ve been in recent years.

Fans are tired of hearing about rebuilds. They’re tired of moral victories and patience speeches while watching other programs buy instant turnarounds. The numbers are public now. The quotes are out there. The direction of the market is undeniable.

The transfer portal isn’t a temporary phase, it’s officially the backbone of roster construction moving forward and beyond. And with prices only going up, programs either commit fully or risk falling into the abyss.