Indiana enters 2026 with the No. 1-ranked transfer portal class in On3’s rankings, a sign of how central the portal has become to college football roster building. Curt Cignetti brought in 24 transfers before Indiana’s 2025 national title season, and Fernando Mendoza then won the 2025 Heisman Trophy after transferring at some point in his college career.
The bigger story is that Indiana is no longer alone in treating the portal as a fast track to contention. Clemson coach Dabo Swinney added 10 players from the portal in the past offseason, while four of the top five vote-getters in the 2025 Heisman Trophy race transferred during their college careers. Diego Pavia won the Unitas award after transferring, Eli Stowers won the Mackey award, Jacob Rodriguez claimed the Lombardi, Bednarik and Nagurski awards, Caleb Downs took the Thorpe and KC Concepcion won the Hornung award. Tate Sandell also won the Groza award after transferring.
That is the tension running through the sport now: the transfer portal is no longer just a fix for depth charts, but a path to the top individual honors and, in some cases, to a national title run. The list of likely first-round NFL draft picks also reflects the same trend, with Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor among the names projected near the top of the board.
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North Texas quarterback Hawkins shows how quickly that can work in practice. Last season he rushed for 1,434 yards and 25 touchdowns for the Mean Green, while also catching 32 passes for 370 yards and four more scores. Eric Morris took over for Oklahoma State and Hawkins came with him, along with 16 other North Texas players, as the Cowboys tried to recover from a 1-11 campaign, their worst since 1991. Oklahoma State answered with 54 transfers after that season, a reminder that the portal has become the first place programs look when everything else has to change.
Indiana’s success and Oklahoma State’s overhaul point to the same conclusion: in modern college football, the portal is not an accessory to team building. It is the build.
