The Number Nobody Talks About
The 2026 transfer portal cycle produced 3,300 FBS scholarship entries, 39 programs adding 20-plus transfers, and a national championship team (Indiana) built almost entirely through the portal. Those are the headlines. They are also the easy part of the story.
Here is the hard part: when the 15-day transfer window closed on January 16, over 1,200 FBS scholarship players had no landing spot. Another 561 withdrew from On3's tracker entirely, players who entered the portal, found no market for their services, and quietly disappeared from the data.
Combined, that is approximately 1,761 players, more than half of all FBS entries, who did not find a new home through the portal. Some will return to their original programs. Some will drop to FCS or Division II. Some will stop playing football altogether. The portal's growth story is real, but so is the displacement it creates, and that displacement is accelerating faster than the growth.
The Math That's Breaking
The portal has grown 111.4% since the 2018-19 cycle. FBS roster spots have not grown at all.
| Cycle | FBS Entries | Growth from '19 | Total Roster Spots | Est. Open Spots |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | 1,561 | — | 11,560 (136 × 85) | ~3,400 |
| 2020-21 | 1,770 | +13.4% | 11,560 | ~3,400 |
| 2022-23 | 2,303 | +47.5% | 11,560 | ~3,400 |
| 2024-25 | 3,000 | +92.2% | 11,560 | ~3,400 |
| 2025-26 | 3,300 | +111.4% | 14,280 (136 × 105)* | ~3,400 |
*The House v. NCAA settlement (July 2025) replaced the 85-scholarship headcount system with a 105-player roster limit, schools can now offer scholarships to any player on their roster. Total spots increased by 20 per team, but the real constraint is open spots: roughly 25 per team per year from graduation, NFL departures, transfers out, and attrition. Those ~3,400 annual openings are split between high school recruits and portal transfers, leaving an estimated ~1,700 spots for portal entrants. The exact split varies by program and isn't tracked centrally.
In the 2018-19 cycle, roughly 1,561 players entered a market with a similar number of openings. Supply and demand were roughly balanced. By 2025-26, the House settlement expanded rosters from 85 scholarships to a 105-player cap, pushing total FBS roster spots from 11,560 to 14,280. But the constraint was never total roster spots. It's open spots. Each team turns over roughly 25 roster slots per year (~3,400 across FBS), and those openings are split between high school recruits and portal transfers. An estimated 1,700 spots are realistically available for portal entrants. That's 3,300 entries competing for ~1,700 openings, a ratio approaching 2:1. The portal doubled. The chairs didn't.
This is a classic oversaturation problem, and it hits different tiers of talent in very different ways.
The Tiered Market
Elite talent, four- and five-star transfers, starting quarterbacks, All-Conference performers, always finds a home. Sam Leavitt went from Arizona State to LSU. James Smith and Qua Russaw went from Alabama to Ohio State. Darian Mensah went from Duke to Miami and brought his favorite receiver with him. For these players, the portal works exactly as designed: a free market where production is rewarded with better opportunities.
The problem is in the middle and bottom of the market.
A three-star linebacker who started eight games at a mid-tier Big 12 program enters the portal expecting lateral or upward movement. He is now competing against 3,299 other entrants for a shrinking pool of available spots, because the elite programs filled their needs first, and the mid-tier programs are importing from the same pool he's in. The window is 15 days. Programs move fast, commit to their targets within the first week, and the players who aren't on a short list by day five are facing a rapidly emptying market.
Of the 3,464 players tracked by On3 this cycle, 2,429 committed to a new program (70.1%). That sounds healthy until you realize 1,035 didn't, and that's On3's broader count that includes walk-ons. The NCAA's FBS scholarship count tells a starker story: approximately 1,200 scholarship players were left without a landing spot.
The Single-Window Compression
The NCAA's decision to eliminate the spring transfer window made this worse. In previous cycles, players who didn't find a home in the winter window had a second chance in the spring. That safety valve is gone. All portal activity now happens in a single 15-day January window, and when it closes, it closes.
The compression benefits programs with large recruiting staffs, advanced portal scouting operations, and NIL war chests, the same programs that were already winning. It hurts everyone else. A Group of Five program with two full-time recruiting analysts cannot evaluate 3,300 entries in 15 days. An individual player who doesn't get offers in the first week has almost no leverage and almost no time to find alternatives.
The result is a market that functions efficiently for the top 20% and chaotically for everyone else.
The Human Cost
The 561 players who withdrew from On3's tracker are the most troubling data point. These are players who entered the portal, could not find a new program, and either returned to their original school (if the school would take them back) or left FBS football entirely. There is no public dataset that tracks what happens to these players. They simply disappear from the portal tracker, and no one follows up.
Some return to their original program, but re-entry isn't guaranteed, and the relationship is often damaged. A player who publicly entered the portal was publicly looking to leave. Coaches notice. Playing time may shrink. Scholarships may not be renewed the following year.
Some transfer down to FCS, Division II, or NAIA programs, a path that preserves eligibility but effectively ends any NFL draft aspirations for all but the most exceptional athletes.
Some stop playing. For a scholarship athlete whose entire college career was funded by football, losing that scholarship means losing access to education. This is the part of the portal story that generates no headlines and has no tracking mechanism.
The Coaching Carousel Multiplier
Two coaching changes alone, Matt Campbell from Iowa State to Penn State, and Eric Morris taking over at Oklahoma State, drove over 100 combined departures in this cycle. When Campbell left Iowa State, 50+ players entered the portal. Many followed him to Penn State. The ones who didn't were mid-tier Big 12 players flooding a market that was already oversupplied.
Oklahoma State's 64 departures after a 1-11 season produced a similar effect. These weren't elite transfers commanding attention from top-25 programs. They were players from a one-win team trying to find a new roster spot in a 15-day window alongside 3,200 other entrants.
The coaching carousel and the transfer portal now amplify each other. Every coaching change triggers a wave of portal entries. Every wave pushes more players into an oversaturated market. And the NCAA's single-window format ensures there's no recovery mechanism for the players who get caught in the surge.
What Should Change
We are a data company, not a policy shop. But three things seem clear from the numbers.
First, the single-window format is producing worse outcomes for non-elite players than the two-window system it replaced. A second window, even a shorter one, would give displaced players a recovery mechanism. The current system treats a three-star sophomore and a Heisman candidate identically: 15 days, one shot.
Second, the NCAA should be tracking outcomes for portal entrants who don't find a landing spot. Right now, 561 players withdrew from On3's tracker and we have no idea what happened to them. If the portal is going to be the primary mechanism for player movement, and it is, then the governing body should know whether it's working for all players or just the top tier.
Third, the growth rate is not sustainable. At the current pace, the 2027-28 cycle will produce roughly 3,600 FBS scholarship entries competing for an estimated 1,700 portal-available spots, a ratio approaching 2.5:1. Even after the House settlement expanded rosters by 20 spots per team, the open-spot constraint hasn't changed. The market will become even more buyer-friendly for programs and even more punishing for players without elite production or star ratings.
The transfer portal has permanently changed college football for the better in many ways. Players have agency. Programs can fill needs quickly. Indiana won a national championship through targeted portal use. But a system that displaces 1,200 scholarship athletes per cycle, with no tracking, no safety net, and a 15-day window, is a system that needs structural attention before the next wave hits.
Data: NCAA Division I transfer reports, On3 transfer portal tracker, 247Sports class rankings. For the full 2026 portal rankings and analysis, see our Transfer Portal Impact Rankings.