Major college football program loses 15 players to transfer portal after 2025 season

The actual 2025 college football season is now over for many schools, marking the start of another rollicking transfer portal season. We’ve got drama already, as one school out of the ACC has already seen 15 of its players announce intentions to transfer out of the program — and the portal doesn’t even open until January!

While the portal itself isn’t officially open for business until the third day of the new 2026 calendar year, with the actual regular season done, players are well within their right to announce that they do or do not plan to enter the portal. Frankly, for players outside of the College Football Playoff, their decisions almost need to be made before that actual 1/3 date.

That’s not going to be an issue at North Carolina, where 15 players have already decided they do not wish to return to Chapel Hill for the 2026 season, according to the On3 transfer tracker. The Tar Heels finished just 4-8 in head coach Bill Belichick’s first season, and as soon as it ended, a slew of players hit the doors. You can see the full list of guys who left right here:

List of 15 UNC transfers

The biggest losses among that crop? It may be the hit to the pass catchers. Green, Johnson, Gause and Culliver were, in order, the 4-7 spots on the team in terms of receiving yards — and all four of those guys posted more than 100 on the year. Added up, it’s not a small chunk of production. Plus, with what UNC loses at the top of the receiver depth chart, you’d think these guys were in for a big year in 2026. Alas, it’s not to be.

It’s no secret Bill Belichick’s first year coaching at North Carolina did not go well, but for 15 guys to immediately jump ship in the first week or so since the last game is definitely alarming. Is Belichick even planning to return? We haven’t heard otherwise, but the player movement signals something isn’t quite right at UNC.

Just take Auburn for instance. They fired their head coach yet have only had one player so far announce that he’s entering the transfer portal. The same is true for Arkansas, just one announced transfer thus far despite changing head coaches. Florida? Again, only one guy has transferred. That’s three SEC schools who changed coaches that have combined to have one-fifth the departures that North Carolina has already had.

If that’s confusing, we’re just saying… this many transfers so soon after the end of the season and still so far away from the actual portal opening… must mean something. Because at schools that didn’t even have coaches for months at a time, players are hardly leaving.

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