Florida State, Ole Miss standing out in self-evaluation of rosters

The transfer portal era in college athletics sees thousands of athletes changing programs on a yearly basis. However, some head coaches have been able to evaluate their rosters and reach into the portal to secure exactly who they need to succeed the following season better than others.

On3 national scout Cody Bellaire, who has held staff positions at LSU, Texas A&M, Baylor and Texas Tech, joined Andy Staples on Friday morning to discuss which programs are the best at adapting to this aspect of recruiting out of the transfer portal.

“I think there’s two that really stick out,” Bellaire told Staples. “Florida State is one. The second one would be Ole Miss. And the way they’ve essentially transform their rosters in two years time, maybe a year? The thing that I don’t think a lot of people realize too. … Now, this is a rule that’s in place already. And I don’t think people are aware of this. When I joined Joe McGuire at Texas Tech, that first year, you can essentially kick anyone on the current roster to the curb, and so essentially, you can clear out room on your current roster off the jump immediately when you step on campus.

“I don’t think people realize like, how cutthroat it really is and how easily teams can essentially flip a roster in one to two years.”

Bellaire noted that when the age of transfer portal and NIL began, many on the football side of things thought they could flip a roster quickly, but that initial timeline was predicted to be three or four years worth. Instead coaches like Mike Norvell and Lane Kiffin have utilized talent from the portal and have seen immediate success.

The game was changed even more when Deion Sanders left Jackson State to be the new head coach at Colorado. Coach Prime recruited an entire team filled with transfers and took the nation by storm at the beginning of the season. While that success did not last through the end of the season, it certainly changed the way people looked at the transfer portal.

Any one could go anywhere, essentially.

“It’s very interesting to me because Ole Miss and Florida State, they were able to do it and not have any headaches,” Bellaire continued. “And to your point, Andy, it’s about the evaluation of the roster. And it’s about understanding the big thing. I think that’s going to be another change in this, people are going to have dedicated staff members that are essentially salary cap machines. And they’re going to say, ‘Hey, these guys are all worth X amount of money, these guys are all worth X amount of money.

“We can afford to lose this tight end that’s commanding $250,000, and we can say, ‘Okay, let’s use that $250,000 to get two corners and a running back. And that makes us better.'”

Bellaire believes this mindset is the next step in the evaluation process for how coaches will ultimately understand where funding needs to go to make their team better. So far, Bellaire believes Norvell and Kiffin are two of the best at it.