Missouri football does not appear to be wasting much time on the most important question on its roster.

Multiple reports landed Friday, Jan. 2, indicating that the Tigers are the team to watch for Austin Simmons, who, at the beginning of the 2025 season, was widely expected to be the starting quarterback for the Ole Miss Rebels under then-head coach Lane Kiffin.

Simmons, according to a report Friday from national ESPN reporter Pete Thamel, has entered the transfer portal with a no-contact tag. That typically means that a player has a good idea where they would like to end up, and it bars other schools from reaching out to him or his representatives.

We’ve known Leavitt was going to leave Arizona State for a couple weeks now after a social media post, but he’s officially in the portal as of this morning.

He played in seven games this season before suffering a foot injury that required him to have surgery and miss the remainder of the year. In those seven games, he threw for 1,628 yards and 10 TDs along with three interceptions. He also ran for 306 yards and five TDs. The previous season, he threw for 2,885 yards and 24 TDs with six interceptions while running for another five rushing TDs.

The former four-star prospect originally committed to Michigan State before transferring to ASU, where he’s been the last 2 years.

Auburn wide receiver Cam Coleman announced his intention to enter the transfer portal on Dec. 29, a move that assuredly had high-profile programs queuing up for his services.

Four days later, and a day until the transfer portal officially opens, an apparent leader for those services emerged: the Texas Longhorns.

The Houston Chronicle’s Kirk Bohls reported that Texas is saving NIL money in an effort to land Coleman in the portal – even though the star wideout’s asking price could be as high as $4 million.

Coleman is arguably the top overall player to announce plans to enter the transfer portal this offseason, having accounted for over 1,300 yards in 2 seasons at Auburn despite inconsistent quarterback play on the Plains.

According to Pro Football Focus, Coleman caught 57 of his 88 targets this season. His average depth of target was 13.4 yards, which was third among SEC receivers with at least 75 targets.

Adding Coleman to the Longhorns would be a major coup for an offense that ranked 45^th in the country both in passing yards (250.7) and scoring (30.5) in 2025. Arch Manning is set to return for his junior season after throwing for 3,163 yards and 26 touchdowns against seven interceptions.

An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. He also hosts Gulfshore Sports with David Wasson, weekdays from 3-5 pm across Southwest Florida and on FoxSportsFM.com. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.

Turnover in the Texas Longhorns wide receiver room continued on Thursday with the unexpected news that redshirt freshman Parker Livingstone will enter the NCAA transfer portal when it opens.

The 6’4, 191-pounder’s decision comes in the wake of Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian opting to retain position coach Chris Jackson as Livingstone becomes the third departure, joining junior DeAndre Moore Jr. and redshirt freshman Aaron Butler.

Ranked as a consensus four-star prospect out of Lucas Lovejoy in the 2024 recruiting class, Livingstone was the No, 270 prospect nationally and the No. 46 wide receiver, according to the 247Sports Composite rankings. With 35 offers, Livingstone took official visits to Texas and South Carolina before committing to the Longhorns. Other offers included Arkansas, Auburn, Florida State, Georgia, LSU, Miami, Michigan, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas A&M, among others.

As a freshman, Livingstone appeared in four games for the Longhorns, playing 28 snaps and receiving two targets without recording a catch.

Entering the 2025 season, Livingstone drew buzz during the spring for his development and emerged as a seven-game starter during his redshirt freshman season, flashing early with three touchdowns and 175 receiving yards on six receptions over the first two games.

Livingstone finished the year with 29 receptions for 516 yards and six touchdowns, ending the campaign as the fourth-leading receiver in receptions, the third-leading receiver in receiving yards, and the second-leading receiver in touchdown catches.

The promise that Livingstone showed during his breakout second season on the Forty Acres didn’t lead to a third year in Austin even though he was a roommate of quarterback Arch Manning and grew up a Longhorns fan.

So that marks Moore and Livingstone as major contributors who are leaving the Texas program as Sarkisian and general manager Brandon Harris push to upgrade a position that finished as a net disappointment with the possibility increasing that the Horns will target multiple wide receivers in the portal, including a high-profile target like Cam Coleman.

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In the first two years of the 12-team Playoff era, teams with first-round byes went 1-7. But five of those seven were underdogs or tiny favorites anyway, and the lone winner just humiliated Alabama by 35 in easily the greatest moment in program history (so far). So I think it’s a wash.

Either way, college football has joined the NFL and MLB debates on whether it’s bad or good to get a free pass to the second round. Happy New Year!{{/ifContains}}

Absolute Cinema: What a fresh final four

Quick Snaps

🅾️ For much of this season, college football’s highest-rated team was Ohio State, while the lowest-rated team in Division III was just two hours away: Oberlin, which went an emphatic 0-10. Guess which team had more fun? (Fun fact: The Yeomen were also the last Ohio team to beat the Buckeyes in football, getting it done in 1921.)

🏆 Coaches on two different sides of yesterday’s ledger:

• “This is a playoff, and in my opinion, should’ve been played in Lubbock, Texas.” Dan Lanning’s right, even though it would’ve made things tougher on his Ducks yesterday. (Maybe not 23 points tougher.)
• Elsewhere, Kirby Smart saying the Sugar Bowl felt at times like a road game wasn’t sour grapes. Giving every top seed a home game, even at the expense of those apparently risky byes, will surely be part of somebody’s case for a 16-team Playoff.

📺 The NFL had 84 of 2025’s 100 most-watched TV events, per Sports Business Journal. College football was the second-biggest presence, with half of the other 16. Bet 2026 started hot, too.

Still Alive: Welcome to the all-at-once portal era

Because there isn’t enough going on, today is the first day of 2026’s only football portal period, lasting through Jan. 16. In the previous world, a 30-day December window was followed by 15 days in April. Now there’s only one shot to get it right.

“This is a new deal for all of us. You can’t fix it again in May if you mess it up. We have to be great during these 14 days and be efficient with our time and resources. If you miss on a kid, you can’t fix it. Our kids’ and coaches’ lives will be determined by these next 14 days.”

That’s Tulsa head coach Tre Lamb, explaining part of the thinking behind the Portal House. In a five-bedroom, Xbox-laden house near the Golden Hurricane’s campus, Lamb’s staff will host visiting prospects day and sometimes literally night. The viral-friendly experiment might sound like a gimmick, but it’s kind of the opposite:

“You’re saving money because you’re not taking guys to Ruth’s Chris and Polo Grill every night where it’s $2,000-$3,000 dinners every single night. … You’ve got $180,000 in your recruiting budget. We would rather bring guys to campus and to this house.”

If this works well, expect it to be copied once the portal re-opens … in 2027. More here.

As for the big names to know:

• Probably gonna link to this another time or two, so you might as well just have it open: 2026 transfer QB rankings, to be updated with destinations and more names. As noted, Cincinnati QB Brendan Sorsby could be this cycle’s money man.
• Top five portal players at each non-QB position. Highest upside: Auburn WR Cam Coleman. Best name: NC State RB Hollywood Smothers. Most decorated: Utah edge John Henry Daley, potentially a major get for Kyle Whittingham’s Michigan.
• In those two links, No. 7 QB Rocco Becht and five of those 50 non-QB players are all leaving Iowa State. Would’ve been Big 12 contenders, now following Matt Campbell to Penn State?

More portal next week, and more on the site until then.

January Madness: SEC’s bowl record matters as much as you want

The SEC’s mark in this season’s postseason games against non-SEC teams: 2-6. Average score against ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten teams: 27-20.

Neither of those two wins merits much bragging, either. Ole Miss won a home Playoff game against an 11th-seeded Tulane team that it’d already beaten in the regular season, and No. 13 Texas beat an interim-coached No. 18 Michigan 41-27 in the Citrus.

Otherwise, it was a lot of stuff like No. 23 Iowa winning 34-27 in Tampa, putting to rest talk of No. 14 Vanderbilt having been a Playoff snub.

The SEC has failed the likes of whoever sponsors the Music City Bowl these days (Illinois 30, Tennessee 28). How much does that matter? Two simultaneous truths:

1. Bowl results have always said dubious things about how good any particular team might be. In the modern era, that’s due to opt-outs and coaching changes, but it’s been a thing for decades. The polls didn’t unanimously start counting bowls toward national titles until the 1970s. Even a decade ago, when rosters were quaint in their stability, teams in bowls simply did not behave like themselves. Ask anyone who’s ever worked with computer power ratings. So the SEC’s ugly winter (and mere 13-11 record across the previous two postseasons) might not accurately reflect team quality.
2. But if the SEC’s gonna talk our ears off about its depth, it has to dominate, regardless of context. It had a mostly good non-con during this regular season, which mostly backed up this summer’s schedule-strength PR. Thing about PR, though: You don’t get to choose which games the public ignores. Football still happened this past week. We saw it.

Tonight, we’ll see if 5-7 Mississippi State can impress in the Mayo Bowl against 8-4 Wake Forest. Very funny to consider how many serious narratives hinge on which coach takes a mayo dump to the skull.

After that, if the Rebels win the national championship, these things will become mere fun facts. But if they don’t reach the title game, these things will be especially fun facts for those who enjoy SEC schadenfreude.

• Other bowl note: Citrus Bowl star Arch Manning’s probably about to be a two-time offseason Heisman favorite. First to pull that off without winning it in the meantime since … a former Citrus Bowl star named Peyton? (Trevor Lawrence was really close to doing it.)

That’s it for today. Just nine games left, including today’s four bowls on the watchability calendar below. Don’t forget Sunday’s Division III championship in Canton, Ohio’s Stagg Bowl (three-trophy dynasty North Central vs. high-scoring upstart Wisconsin-River Falls) and Monday’s FCS title game in Nashville (10.5-point BetMGM favorite Montana State vs. road warrior Illinois State). See you Tuesday.

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