Navigating the choppy waters of the transfer portal is anything but a straightforward process. There are analytical short cuts that teams can use to make the process easier. There are no-doubt players who enter. But, at the end of the day, schools are often trying to figure out what’s wrong with a player in a limited amount of time — based on, often, a limited amount of information that they have.
Teams need to sift through thousands of players each cycle. Some are easy to identify. Caleb Downs? Obvious stud. Many others are far more difficult to judge and measure.
So how do teams find under-the-radar players from the FCS level? How do programs look at often-injured potential contributors? Can you risk going in on a former five-star who seems like a bust? What about a highly rated former recruit who entered the portal after playing few snaps his true freshman season?
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To get a sense of how schools attack that process, 247Sports spoke to several staffers in both the player personnel and performance spaces to figure out how they found or evaluated some of 2024’s unexpected portal breakout stars. Let’s start in Cincinnati, where the Bearcats found one of the best linebackers in college football this season playing for Central Arkansas.
