Familiar faces, new places: QB transfers have taken over college football

On Thursday night, Rutgers kicks off Week 1 of the 2024 college football season by starting a transfer at quarterback.

That’s where our story begins, with Athan Kaliakmanis, the man they call “The Greek Rifle.”

Kaliakmanis transferred from Minnesota, which also opens its season Thursday night with a transfer quarterback from the FCS level, Max Brosmer, in a game against North Carolina, who will start a transfer quarterback as well from Texas A&M. And Texas A&M? It kicks off the season hosting Notre Dame, which starts a transfer quarterback from Duke, and Duke will open the season with a transfer quarterback from Texas.

Are you keeping up? Because there’s more where this came from.

Texas starts a quarterback Quinn Ewers, who originally started his career at Ohio State, and wouldn’t you know it, Ohio State starts a quarterback, Will Howard, who last played at Kansas State. Kansas State, shockingly enough, won’t start a transfer quarterback, but you know who will? Both teams playing in Gainesville, Florida, when Miami and Florida meet Saturday afternoon. Miami’s Cam Ward came from Washington State, and Florida’s Graham Mertz came from Wisconsin, which itself opens the season Friday night with — you’ll never guess — a transfer starting quarterback from … Miami.

In all, 43 transfer quarterbacks are projected to start among the 68 power conference teams — a 63% clip that is perhaps the most glaring sign yet of the transient era of college football. Thirty of those 43 projected transfer starters are in their first year at their new school.

Unusual if not downright rare years ago, such a leap — team rookie to starting quarterback — is often now the norm when a quarterback starter at one power conference school moves to another.

In fact, there are first-year transfer starting quarterbacks at many conference champion favorites and expected CFP contenders like Ohio State (Howard), Oregon (Dillon Gabriel), Notre Dame (Riley Leonard) and Miami (Ward).

Those four players are believed to be among the highest-paid in college football, each having entered name, image and likeness contracts paying them high six figures and even into the seven-figure range, according to those with knowledge of the market.

The high rate of quarterback movement isn’t rooted in only playing time — it’s rooted in money.

“I would say if you are trying to get a starting quarterback with Power Four experience to transfer, you are in the $1.5 million range,” said Russell White, president of The Collective Association (TCA), a group of more than 30 NIL collectives from various schools across the country.

The seven-figure sticker price is reserved for only the most valuable transfer quarterbacks in the cycle, said Jason Belzer, CEO and co-founder of SANIL (Student Athlete NIL), an organization that manages more than 50 collectives across the nation. The average NIL cost of a transfer QB this past year was $350,000, he said. Fewer than 10 quarterbacks cracked the $1 million mark.

Still, that’s a lot of cash.

“Quarterback is the most valued of any position,” Belzer said.

That’s especially the case if the quarterback has starting experience at a power conference school. Six of the 43 projected starters this week have power conference experience at two schools, including Max Johnson at North Carolina (Texas A&M and LSU), Tyler Shough at Louisville (Texas Tech and Oregon) and DJ Uiagalelei at Florida State (Oregon State and Clemson).

One quarterback even has experience at a third school. Cal QB Chandler Rogers is on his fourth different FBS university (North Texas, UL-Monroe and Southern Miss).

It’s a transient quarterback world, except for a few notable Week 1 exceptions.

For instance, arguably the two biggest games — LSU vs. USC in Las Vegas and Georgia vs. Clemson in Atlanta — feature zero transfer starting quarterbacks. The rarity really unfolds in Sin City as each starting quarterback — Miller Moss at USC and Garrett Nussmeier at LSU — has been on the roster for three years with a single start.

Patience — a virtue — still exists. Nussmeier, rumored to be portal bound in 2023, never transferred. Why? He points to his deep faith. “God brought me to LSU for a reason,” he said over the summer.

And what about Moss? He’s an anomaly at USC and among his peers across the college landscape. When many of his teammates left upon the hiring of head coach Lincoln Riley, he stayed. When Riley brought his quarterback from Oklahoma, Caleb Williams, he stayed.

Why leave, Moss asks. “I love this place.”

While Moss waited his turn, virtually every other highly rated quarterback from his signing class transferred from their original school. Eight of the top 10 quarterbacks in the 2021 class entered the portal at some point during their career, and that includes his predecessor at USC.

Williams’ transfer, in fact, set off one of those quarterback-transfer domino effects.

Oklahoma replaced him with Gabriel from UCF, which landed KJ Jefferson this year from Arkansas, which in turn picked up Taylen Green from Boise State, which, as it turns out, signed Malachi Nelson from… USC.

It all comes full circle.

Just because it has become the norm — first-year transfer starting quarterbacks — does not mean it is easy. Just ask Blake Shapen, who spent the past four years at Baylor before transferring to Mississippi State this offseason. He’ll play at a new school, in a new conference and for a new coach.

First on his to-do list upon arriving in Starkville: Hang with the boys.

“Hanging out outside of the facility is a big deal,” Shapen said. “You have to build these relationships before the season. You can’t just go onto the field and play with somebody you really don’t know. So hanging out, doing regular things like regular dudes do and just building those relationships.”

Baylor, in fact, is one of three schools to have the most former quarterbacks starting this season at other schools. The Bears, Texas and Texas Tech each have three former QBs starting elsewhere. Three of those nine QBs are seventh-year players and a fourth is in his sixth year. They are spread out, as west as Utah, north to Purdue and south to Virginia.

You probably don’t even remember Oklahoma State QB Alan Bowman’s days as a Red Raider. It happened before the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the most part, these quarterback transfers are deeper in their 20s than most college athletes. The average starting QB transfer this season has spent 4.7 years in college. They are 23, 24, 25 years old, and some of them are even 26.

They are long in the tooth, yes, but also padded in the wallet.

“The highest deal this year for a QB that we saw was about $1.2 million,” Belzer said.

Experts wonder how or if the quarterback market will change starting next July when schools are permitted to share a certain amount of revenue directly with athletes. According to the House antitrust settlement, schools can begin sharing as much as $22 million annually with all of their athletes — not just football.

Currently, quarterbacks are reaping the benefits of an unregulated and uncapped pay system through booster-led NIL collectives. Will schools distribute money in a way that decreases quarterback salaries?

“I’m fascinated to see how each school decides to share the revenue,” White said. “We assume they’ll focus on basketball and football, but position by position, how will that look? Flat amount? By position? Tiered system? I think they’ll take care of their valuable players — quarterbacks, running backs, receivers, edge rushers.”

Most schools are expected to distribute revenue similar to how plaintiff’s attorneys in the House case plan to disburse the nearly $2.8 billion in back damages owed to former athletes from the settlement. That formula — roughly 75% to football, 15% to men’s basketball and about 10% to all other sports — does not satisfy the federal Title IX law.

Despite that, several SEC head coaches told Yahoo Sports in July that they expect to have between $12-$17 million at their disposal for their football teams — or about 70-80% of the revenue allotment.

“The reality is, if we move to a $16-$17 million payroll at the top end, are you going to want to spend 10% of your budget on one guy?” Belzer asks. “I don’t see the money going down. We know the average collective is going to deploy $5 million. SEC collectives are in the range of $10-$12 million.”

And then there’s Ohio State, which is at $20 million, athletic director Ross Bjork told Yahoo Sports last month.

Schools are still expected to “lean on collectives” to generate outside, third-party NIL deals for athletes, White said. Any outside deals — if they are deemed authentic and genuine — do not count against a school’s rev-share cap, allowing programs to circumvent the number.

And what about player movement? Many administrators believe that the contracts schools strike with athletes in order to share revenue with them could limit transfer movement. Many school officials are in the midst of deep discussions over featuring buyout provisions in these contracts.

“If the players leave, just like a coach, they’ll have to pay buyouts,” Belzer said.

Either way, the money train for quarterbacks is expected to continue — and so, too, is the transient nature of their profession. Just like coaches.

“Quarterbacks,” White says, “will continue to command top dollar.”