NIL

The Nerd’s Auburn Football Transfer Portal Big Board: Offense v1.0

Published

3 days ago

December 31, 2025

Today’s Observer newsletter is from a new contributor: The artist known as AUNerd, who some of you may remember from his blogging days at College & Magnolia. Nerd is excellent at breaking down Auburn football, especially recruiting, roster management and Xs and Os.

I (Justin) am in a group chat with Nerd, and I saw him starting to put together an incredibly detailed big board of potential targets for Auburn football in what will be a massive transfer portal window for new head coach Alex Golesh and his staff. I loved the idea so much that I wanted Nerd to publish it on The Observer.

Christmas has passed, but the real gift-opening season in college football is just getting started. Every year, the transfer portal seems to operate on a new set of timelines, and this cycle is no different.

This year features a single portal window, running from Friday, January 2 through Friday, January 16. Players on active College Football Playoff teams receive an additional five-day window (January 20–24), while players on teams that hire a new head coach after January 2 are granted a separate 15-day window.

Gone are the old fall and spring cycles. By the end of January, we’ll have a much clearer picture of what 2026 college football rosters will look like.

It’s also worth noting that players don’t have to commit during this window — it’s simply the only period in which they can enter the portal. That said, spring semester enrollment deadlines at most universities mean many of these decisions will happen quickly.

For Auburn, this portal cycle is critical.

When John Cohen hired Alex Golesh, he emphasized roster retention. Wanting to retain players and actually retaining them, however, are two very different things.

Auburn currently leads the SEC in players entering the portal, with more expected in the coming days. All told, the Tigers may need to add 35-40 new players over the next two weeks.

That number is staggering, but it’s also the reality of modern college football.

What follows is an attempt to identify potential offensive-side portal targets for Auburn. This list is built from a mix of reported intel from Auburn On3 and Auburn247 insiders, along with educated guesswork rooted in prior staff relationships. In today’s portal era, those connections matter more than ever. We saw that last season with Xavier Atkins, who followed a strong relationship with DJ Durkin to the Plains.

One quick note on methodology: you’ll see frequent references to Pro Football Focus (PFF) grades below. PFF is far from a perfect evaluation tool, but without the time — or expertise — to grind full tape on every portal entrant, it serves as a useful proxy for understanding where a player generally stacks up. This is especially true along the offensive line.

Finally, a disclaimer: parts of this list will almost certainly be wrong. A lot will change in a very short window. Think of this as a starting point, both for who Auburn might target and the types of players this staff is likely prioritizing at each position. Everything is subject to change the moment the portal officially opens.

Let’s dive in.

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NIL

Should you enter NCAA transfer portal? What all athletes need to know

Published

16 minutes ago

January 3, 2026

Your Sports Nation

Jan. 3, 2026, 7:02 a.m. ET

We tend to think of the transfer portal, at least as outside observers, in terms of opportunistic players.

Those are the ones who seek a “better” situation in terms of playing time or, at the upper echelon of Division I sports, a chance to get paid.

The reality, says Linda Martindale, a mental fitness coach for high school and college athletes, is many of them are pushed into the portal.

“A coach says, ‘You’re not gonna play here, so find somewhere else to play,’ ” Martindale, who coaches high school basketball in the Boston area, told USA TODAY Sports last month. “It happens all the time.

“The transfer portal is not full of selfish athletes who want to find something better or who aren’t getting to play, which I think some people think. It’s probably a 50-50. You know, you’ve been over-recruited. You’re not as good as, maybe, the coach thought you were gonna be. That kind of thing.”

Jan. 2 marked the start of the NCAA’s transfer portal window for football that runs through Jan. 16. Longer windows start for basketball in March and continue throughout the spring and summer for other sports.

The process involves thousands of kids every year. Top athletes are lured by schools through payments they receive from Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deals.

“I had a Power Four basketball GM tell me straight up, ‘We don’t recruit anymore. We acquire,’ ” says Brian Cruver, co-founder and CEO of Scorability, a database that stores player information that coaches and athletes use as a recruiting tool. “ ‘We look at how much money we have to spend and we go spend it. And if we have to spend more on this kid, it’s less we have available to spend on this other kid.’ It’s basically just dealing with an amount of money and what can you buy with it?”

Cruver, though, says players seeking large sums of NIL money make up a small fraction of college athletes on NCAA, NAIA or junior college teams. The rest are looking for help to find the right spot, investing time and money, and anguish, to do so.

What do we need to know if our kids are thinking of entering the transfer portal? Here are four questions athletes and parents can ask themselves, gleaned from consultation with experts:

YOUTH SPORTS SURVIVAL GUIDE: Pre-order Coach Steve’s upcoming book for young athletes and their parents

What do you really know – or maybe not know – about the transfer portal?

The system allows athletes to transfer to another school and be eligible to play the next season, sometimes earlier.

What I learned from listening to coaches at on-campus baseball prospect camps (Division I, II and III) with my son, now a high school senior, is you’re not guaranteed to be picked up by another school when you enter the transfer portal.

According to recent NCAA data, about 30% of Division I athletes who enter the portal don’t find another D-I program.

Perhaps there’s a sounder strategy, for any level.

“We’ve had some people transfer to programs where they want to play,” North Carolina women’s lacrosse coach Jenny Levy told Martindale on Martindale’s ‘Game Changers’ podcast in 2024. “They’re usually kids that aren’t getting what they want on the field. Sometimes they say, ‘Jenny, I’m going to graduate early, and I’m going to go somewhere where I can play.’

“I’m like, ‘Great, let me help you.’ I have no problem with that. I’m very supportive of those players all the time. … But if you’re leaving just because you’re not getting what you want, don’t have the patience to actually develop yourself, and you just want a CliffsNotes version to start, and you want to go top 10 to top 10, then I think that’s bad parenting, personally.

“If you’re gonna go to a program that’s maybe not in the top 10, so maybe you finish your degree at the school where you are and you’ve got eligibility left and you want to go have a different experience and maybe play for a program that you can get on the field with, I think that’s great. Good for those guys.”

Coach Steve:How do I get recruited? Our series goes behind curtain of D-I

No one comes to sit on the bench, but what are you getting out of being on the team?

If you are thinking about entering the portal, consider talking to your college coach first.

Do they support your decision? Will your school take you back if you don’t land somewhere else? That conversation might help you better realize your value to them.

“I think part of my job is managing disappointment,” Levy told Martindale. “And you have to understand that no one came to sit on the bench … You have to be aware that while you’re still pushing and prodding your highest performers, there’s a whole group of players that are human, and they want to achieve, and they want to feel valued. And so we talk a lot about that.

“Sometimes the kid’s like, ‘I’m just not better than the player in front of me.’ And that’s OK. What they’re doing takes courage. It takes commitment and passion. And in four years, when they get out of our program, they have learned a whole set of skills, intangible skills that they will take with them for their lives. And so we really start to talk about what are you learning as a human? What are you taking with you?”

Ray Priore, who spent 38 years as either a head or assistant football coach at the University of Pennsylvania before stepping down in November, admits he was one of the lucky ones among the high-profile sports. He didn’t deal with NIL offers and instead sold the value of an Ivy League education and the career and financial opportunities it brought.

Priore called the Ivy League experience “NIL for life.” Still, he told USA TODAY Sports in November, Penn has lost a player or two every year since the transfer portal opened in 2018. One of them was running back Malachi Hosley, the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year in 2024. He left for Georgia Tech and became the nationally ranked FBS team’s second leading rusher in 2025.

Priore says he was told Hosley received a “significant” NIL deal.

“I’m happy for him because I think he’s at a level and perhaps the NIL situation is helping his family,” Priore said. “And I think that that’s a good thing. Hurtful, from the standpoint it hurts us. Because now you lose that person.”

According to the NFL, about 1.6% of NCAA football players make it to the professional level. Most other sports don’t even have that opportunity.

“We really try to create a transformational experience here,” says Levy, who has won four national titles at North Carolina. “Lacrosse is not a sport that they’re going to go pro and make a living off of just being a lacrosse player. You’re going to get a job.

“You’re going to have different types of responsibilities outside of the sport after you graduate. And so for us, obviously we want to (position) the team every year to win a conference and NCAA championship, but the culture piece is also very high.

“And that includes team building, it includes career networking and development. So it includes a lot of different things that are addressing developing the whole human.”

I was a rower at a top collegiate program who was often left out of my school’s varsity boats. But I still carry skills learned from the sport – many of them in practice – such as coordinating with others and persevering through difficult tasks. I stuck with the team for three years and stepped away from it for a more “normal” student life my senior year.

“I think we have the greatest classroom in the world,” Priore said in November, pointing out the window of his office at Penn’s Franklin Field. “I don’t care what the venue is.

“I think that’s where maybe parents sometimes miss it. Why is a kid playing? My niece was a good high school soccer player. But my younger brother, at the same time, thought she was like Mia Hamm. She was a scholarship level but she wasn’t going to the Olympics. She was (on) every travel team, elite squad. …. And it’s like, parents, just let the kid enjoy it.”

Is the grass really greener somewhere else?

Parents tell kids they should be playing more on their team. In the case of Howard men’s basketball coach Kenny Blakeney, they request floor seats from him in return for their son’s commitment.

We can be wiser and sounder with our actions and advice. Martindale, the high school and mental fitness coach who also played D-I basketball, has a son who transferred twice as a Division I college basketball player and now plays professionally in Europe.

Over the years, she has come up with four criteria for good coaches: Know you, connect with you, prepare you for failure, believe in you.

If your coach embodies these qualities in their relationship with you, is it worth leaving?

“It’s not soft and fluffy,” Martindale says. “We’re not suggesting that everyone sings songs after a game around a campfire. We know it’s sports, we know it’s competitive, we know it’s aggressive. But joy comes from preparation, from knowing that you’ve given everything you have, of competing, of showing up … all the things that you’re doing, and you’re not giving yourself any credit for.”

Was that ‘fun’?Coco Gauff’s intense US Open embodies what it means in sports

Which situation best helps your end game?

Steve Alford won a national championship playing for Bobby Knight and has coached a number of teams into the NCAA tournament over 30-plus seasons as a Division I men’s basketball head coach.

Like a number of his veteran peers, two of whom (Nick Saban, Jay Wright) have gotten out of NCAA coaching, Alford has publicly expressed frustration with the current state of college sports.

“Five years ago, I wasn’t on conversations (with players), saying, ‘How much you want to be paid?’ ” Alford, who now coaches Nevada, said last March. “Never thought that would happen in college basketball. I don’t believe student-athletes shouldn’t be paid. But the way it is now is utterly ridiculous. And it’s changed our game. And so you gotta adapt. Before every game, me and the opposing coach are gonna talk about portal issues. And, you know, where’s academics at? … ”

“It used to be, ‘Hey, what’s my degree gonna look like? What’s your facilities look like? What’s your relationship with the team look like? Are you there for all practices? Are you a coach that dives into relationships, and you’re gonna care for my child?’ You might as well throw all that stuff out, ’cause the only question they’re concerned about is what they’re getting paid in the portal. …

“Most of them are getting what they’re getting before they ever produce. You should have to produce, then you receive. It’s a bad lesson, and we shouldn’t be sending kids off to teach them bad models for when they’re 25 and 26.”

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Washington Huskies Sign QB Demond Williams Jr. to New Deal For 2026

Published

1 hour ago

January 3, 2026

Your Sports Nation

Jan. 2, 2026, 3:44 p.m. PT

Washington Huskies sophomore quarterback Demond Williams Jr. will begin his third season at the school among the top compensated players in college football after agreeing to a new deal on Friday.

ESPN college football insider Pete Thamel reported the deal between the 5-foot-11, 190-pound signal-caller and the school on Friday, reuniting Williams and Jedd Fisch for the next two seasons through his senior year in 2027.

The Chandler, Arizona native emerged as one of the best quarterbacks in the Big Ten in his first year as the Huskies’ starter, throwing for 3,064 yards and 25 touchdowns with an additional 611 yards rushing and six touchdowns on the ground in 2025, leading the program to a 9-4 overall record in year two under Fisch.

Although not a surprise, securing the talented dual-threat quarterback was a top priority for Fisch as he aims to get UW back into double-digit victories and a potential College Football Playoff berth in 2026 while continuing to build the roster through high school recruiting.

Williams, who began getting recruited by Fisch when he was a freshman at Basha High School, finished second in the Big Ten in total offense 192 yards behind USC quarterback Jayden Maiava, something that caught many national pundits by surprise having started only two games in 2024—at Oregon in the regular season finale and the Sun Bowl against Louisville—behind veteran Mississippi State transfer Will Rogers.

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Is Missouri football close to landing transfer portal QB? Reports say so

Published

2 hours ago

January 3, 2026

Your Sports Nation

Updated Jan. 2, 2026, 5:25 p.m. CT

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.

Also according to Thamel, and several other national reporters, Simmons’ most-likely landing spot is in the SEC with Missouri and head coach Eli Drinkwitz.

The move makes sense for Mizzou, which definitely needs a quarterback this offseason but had options in terms of portal strategy.

Missouri can bring back freshman Matt Zollers, who has a talented arm but still needs refining and work to become an SEC starter, as exhibited by an up-and-down day in a Gator Bowl loss to Virginia.

The Tigers are expected to lose 2025 QB1 Beau Pribula to the transfer portal, and while there has been no confirmation from his camp, backup Sam Horn is still widely expected to join the Los Angeles Dodgers’ farm system this year as a highly touted right-handed pitcher.

So, Missouri’s options were two-fold:

Bring in a QB with immediate starting caliber and let Zollers develop behind him.
Bring in a QB who Zollers can compete with over the next eight months.

Simmons, if he does end up committing to Mizzou, would be closer to Option No. 1.

Before Trinidad Chambliss became one of stories of the 2025 college football season, the feeling in Oxford was that Simmons was a highly capable replacement for first-round draft pick Jaxson Dart.

But Simmons picked up an ankle injury in a Week 2 win over Kentucky. While he was limited in September, Chambliss — a Division-II transfer from Ferris State — took over the reins.

Ole Miss is now headed to the CFP semifinals as a 13-1 ball club. It will face Miami in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 8 for a spot in the national title game.

That’s a potentially important date. The current expectation is that Simmons will finish the season with the Rebels before making a transfer decision.

Now, he could announce a transfer decision before then. But he also might wait.

He is from Miami, Florida, and is listed at 6-foot-4, 215 pounds by the Rebels.

In 2025, Simmons completed 60% of his 75 pass attempts for 744 yards, four touchdowns and five interceptions. He rushed 21 times for 82 yards and one touchdown. He also had three fumbles.

Simmons, who is left-handed, has two remaining years of eligibility.

More than two-thirds of his passes were play-action looks, according to Pro Football Focus, which is more than Ole Miss has run with Chambliss. That’s an interesting stylistic difference. For comparison, both Pribula and Zollers ran play-action — a fake handoff into a pass — less than 30% of the time, per PFF.

Comfort with play-action could be a useful tool with how strong Mizzou’s running sets up to be with Ahmad Hardy and Jamal Roberts returning. Play-action looks tend to keep defenses honest defending the pass against strong running outfits, which MU has struggled with recently.

Now, Simmons would not automatically come in and be named the starter. The Tigers would make him earn it over Zollers, based on recent history at the position in Columbia.

But, he would be the favorite. SEC starters don’t come cheap in the NIL age. Players don’t tend to move — think of Pribula last year — without reason to believe they’ll start at their new school.

Like Zollers, Simmons’ best quality is his arm talent. Kiffin, in a story with Thamel at ESPN, compared Simmons to Tua Tagovailoa.

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College football transfer tracker: With portal now open, where will top players end up?

Published

10 hours ago

January 3, 2026

Your Sports Nation

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.

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SEC team linked to star transfer WR Cam Coleman

Published

11 hours ago

January 3, 2026

Your Sports Nation

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.

I can confirm Texas WR Parker Livingstone is entering the transfer portal because the Horns are saying their money to land Auburn’s Cam Coleman.

— Kirk Bohls (@kbohls) January 2, 2026

Texas in good position with Coleman and has an edge over A&M because of Arch Manning, but the Auburn WR is wanting big money. One source says he may ask for $4 million.

— Kirk Bohls (@kbohls) January 2, 2026

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.

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Texas WR Parker Livingstone to enter the NCAA transfer portal

Published

12 hours ago

January 3, 2026

Your Sports Nation

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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