On the heels of their 2024-25 CFP National Championship, the Buckeyes’ continued dominance in 2025 was impressive. Despite losing a large portion of their roster to the NFL Draft after the title game, Ohio State held onto the No. 1 spot for most of the college football season, finished the regular season undefeated, and lost just two games overall—to Indiana in the Big Ten Championship and to Miami in the Cotton Bowl.
Indiana and Miami went on to face off in the 2025 National Championship, and if we’re nitpicking what set these teams apart, their use of the transfer portal played a tremendous role.
We can hem and haw all we want about the shifting landscape of college football, but the shift is happening whether we like it or not. The teams poised for the most success in the coming years are the ones most willing to use this shift to their advantage and adjust rather than relying on the way things have always been done.
This was not new in the 2025 season. After the 2021 rule change allowing students to transfer once without having to sit out a year, one program in particular took immediate advantage of this change: TCU. In his first year as head coach for the Horned Frogs, Sonny Dykes managed the transfer portal—as a tool for both recruiting and retaining talent—more creatively than anyone else that year. It factored heavily into TCU’s unexpected success in a season they finished as the runners-up.
The rules have changed again since then, allowing for unlimited transfers and establishing sport-specific transfer windows, but the sentiment remains the same—portal management and creativity are no longer optional if you want your program to win.
Both Indiana and Miami managed to do this, recruiting veteran talent to their rosters via the transfer portal (including, in Indiana’s case, quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who went on to win the Heisman). Rather than relying on homegrown rosters, Curt Cignetti went shopping for proven talent from other programs.
The Buckeyes, on the other hand, relied far more heavily on talent they had developed, using the portal to add depth rather than shift a starting roster.
It’s entirely possible that a lack of creativity where the portal was concerned ultimately served as the Achilles Heel that kept Ohio State from repeating its title in 2025. Though they had some notable transfer successes, namely tight end Max Klare out of Purdue and right tackle Phillip Daniels, the majority of their eleven total additions were forgettable.
Some of this was performance-based, some of it was adjustment, and some of it was an inexplicable decision on the part of the coaches not to utilize the depth they worked so hard to get. High hopes for Ethan Onianwa on the offensive line were dashed by poor performance. Running back C.J. Donaldson started the year as RB1, but adjustments were needed, and he was shifted to the power back role, with his starting slot going to true freshman Bo Jackson. And then there was Jackson Courville, the kicker who sat on the bench all season despite extremely mediocre performance from starting kicker Jayden Fielding.
I won’t go so far as to say Ryan Day and his coaching staff had no strategy, but whatever their vision was heading into the season, the execution didn’t match. In the end, the Buckeyes fell back on the recruits they’d developed themselves. This strategy of developing talent has worked in the past, and it may continue to work with some isolated position groups in the future, but it seems highly unlikely that this is a viable holistic strategy for any team that wants to stay on top moving forward.
For the Buckeyes in particular, it will be interesting to see if they shift their strategy at wide receiver with the departure of the key developer of talent at Wide Receiver U, Brian Hartline, who took the head coaching job at USF beginning in the 2026 season.
Indiana and Miami, on the other hand, each had top talent that came out of the portal, including Hoosier starting quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who went on to win the Heisman this season. Both teams also seemed to prioritize a portal strategy that stacked their rosters with experienced players and battle-tested veterans, rather than younger guys with room for development.
Now, on the other side of their unceremonious end to the 2025 season, the Buckeyes find themselves in need of a new strategy. In looking at the 2026 transfer portal class, it seems they have already made adjustments. Their 17 transfer portal recruits (16 on scholarship) skew significantly older, with a focus on refueling Matt Patricia’s defense after significant turnover.
But key gaps are being addressed as well. Kicker Connor Hawkins out of Baylor will hopefully be a strong (and much-needed) replacement for Jayden Fielding, while safeties Earl Little Jr. from Florida State and Terry Moore from Duke will be tasked with filling Caleb Downs’s shoes as he heads to the NFL.
There is still work to do, however, and while there is a lot to be excited about in this year’s transfer portal class, which ESPN ranks in the top five, there are still some areas that have me scratching my head, primarily where the offensive line is concerned. Ryan Day seems intent on developing the offensive line from within, despite struggles throughout the season (most notably in the two losses).
Day received criticism for failing to meaningfully strengthen the offensive line through the portal in 2025, something that seemed like a possible oversight early in the season but felt like a grave misstep by the end. Given the lack of offensive line additions through the portal ahead of 2026, I’m not entirely convinced history won’t repeat itself next year. I’m hoping the front five can capitalize on their added experience to significantly improve this offseason, but I’m also mentally preparing for the possibility that it was a mistake not use the portal to round out the O-Line.
It’s all well and good to fill key gaps with the portal, but at this point, that feels almost like a bare minimum. I’ll withhold true criticism until I see how the season shakes out, but I worry Day isn’t being creative enough with the portal to stay competitive with his counterparts like Curt Cignetti.
The Buckeyes have unquestionably succeeded at developing their own talent in the past, but as times change, the strategy likely needs to change with it, adapting and evolving to fit the game’s new landscape. Whether Day has done enough to stay on top in the future, only time will tell.
