Ohio State Head Coach Ryan Day and Athletic Director Ross Bjork watch the football team warm up before the game against UCLA Nov. 15, 2025. Credit: Sandra Fu | Managing Photo Editor
When Quincy Porter and Faheem Delane entered the transfer portal, Buckeye fans wondered if the chaos of modern college football had finally reached Ohio State.
Porter, a five-star freshman wide receiver, and Delane, a four-star safety, were major recruiting wins who saw playing time as freshmen and were projected for larger roles in 2026. Porter transferred to Notre Dame, while Delane landed at LSU. Their exits felt different from other portal losses – less about depth and more about potential.
The worry was compounded by the fact that earlier in the offseason, Ohio State also lost defensive backs Bryce West and Aaron Scott, both highly regarded recruits.
In total, Ohio State lost more than 30 players to the portal and added 17 transfers. However, rather than signaling instability, the departures revealed a strategic adjustment. In a market shaped by NIL and player mobility, Ohio State is leaning more heavily on experienced transfers to complement its traditional high school recruiting pipeline.
A Lantern analysis of incoming and outgoing players found that the newcomers average roughly one year older and 525 more career snaps than those who left.
Ohio State Athletics officials were unable to comment before publication, but Athletic Director Ross Bjork addressed the broader strategy in a January interview with 10TV.
“Older in experience is winning in both college basketball and college football,” Bjork said.
That philosophy reflects a broader trend across the sport. According to 247Sports national analyst Chris Hummer, programs are increasingly prioritizing proven production over long-term development.
“It is a little bit of both,” Hummer said. “The current landscape makes it more logical to add proven talent, but at the same time, the market, agents, NIL and player mobility is pushing programs in this direction whether they want to or not.”
Hummer said the growing presence of agents and expanded NIL opportunities have changed roster dynamics. Players now have clearer information about their market value, and other programs often have the resources to make aggressive offers. That can make it harder for programs to retain young talent waiting for a bigger role.
The Lantern’s analysis examined specific statistics that measure experience among incoming players. To add up snaps, for example, the numbers were collected from individual university websites, player bios and news reports of some players who announced they’d entered the portal.
Websites 247Sports and On3 offer ratings of the transfers, which were also used to evaluate incoming and outgoing players.
In addition to snaps, the incoming players were, on average, rated higher than the departing players by both sites: 2.51 points higher on 247Sports and 0.78 points higher on On3.
Incoming transfer safety Terry Moore played over 1,500 snaps at Duke and is rated higher than Delane on both sites. The Buckeyes also added receivers Devin McCuin and Kyle Parker, who, though rated lower than Porter, have combined for over 1,800 snaps in their careers.
The change in transfer portal tactics could appear to echo Indiana’s approach, which led to a national championship built on transfer players who averaged 23 years old and nearly four years of experience.
In some ways, however, the Buckeyes’ approach remained relatively unchanged, though it appeared different on paper. On3’s expert Pete Nakos voiced this sentiment.
“I would not say they followed a model like Indiana or some of those programs that are building heavily through transfers,” Nakos said. “It felt more like Ohio State trying to address specific needs rather than changing its overall philosophy.”
Hummer also said that Ohio State still has the enviable position of primarily building its roster through high school recruiting, using the portal as a supplement. In the order of operations, roster retention and high school recruiting are still king.?
Bjork also reflected that sentiment.?
Ohio State has always been built on [that] we can recruit the best football players out of high school. “Because it’s Ohio State – we’ve always done that,” he said. “To me, we shouldn’t change that.”
He added, “We retained a lot of our guys. I think people are missing the fact that nine out of eleven offensive starters are coming back. Key defensive pieces are coming back. And we signed 28 high school guys.”
In a separate interview with the Columbus Dispatch, Bjork said, “Because everybody else has the same structure and access, there are things that are going to impact us that maybe haven’t before. We’re in a position to still thrive, but it’s just a different dynamic.”
The portal departures generated anxiety. But the larger picture suggests Ohio State is not abandoning its recruiting model, but rather fortifying it with experience.
Whether that recalibration proves necessary or simply strategic will become clear next fall.
In the transfer portal era, stability no longer means standing still.
