On3 Roundtable: Why Nebraska is strong in recruiting transfer portal

While the NIL era of college football is still relatively young — it’s been allowed for just more than two years — some key ways of benefitting from it have emerged. One that Nebraska, in particular, is starting to see benefits from is dedicated NIL resources more pointedly to transfers over high school recruits.

HuskerOnline’s Sean Callahan broke down this reality for Nebraska on a recent On3 Roundtable with On3’s Andy Staples. Basically, once a player transfers in after playing at another college, you’ve got them locked in after using their one-time transfer.

“And that’s where your collective is big. Because in high school recruiting, sure, your collective might play a factor. But those guys can always still transfer. If they come to you from the portal and the collective’s involved and helping play a factor, they’re locked in. They’ve used their one-time transfer and they’re coming to you on that backend. So I think when you look at collectives everywhere, the transfer portal has almost become a bigger piece to the puzzle than, say, throwing a bunch of money at a high school kid that you may or may not even know if he’s going to pan our or not,” Callahan said.

Staples proposed that Nebraska, as a place with intense interest and investment in the football program paired with a well-oiled NIL machine at this point, would be an attractive destination for any number of transfers looking to make a more business-oriented decision.

Callahan concurred.

One thing Callahan did want to note is the pace of transfers coming in might slow in coming years. Nebraska brought in 14 transfers in the 2023 cycle as Matt Rhule and the new coaching seek to turn over the roster.

Portal hauls might not be so deep in the future, he said.

“I do think that will be a factor in the future. I don’t know if we’ll see 10. And you look at the numbers right now, Andy, they’re at 23 high school guys. There’s so many unknowns with the Covid numbers because there’s upwards of 14, 16 guys that have decisions to make on this roster if they want to come back for that additional, extra Covid year in 2024,” Callahan said.

No matter how those decisions end up shaking out, though, it seems Rhule and Nebraska will be well-positioned for years to come to use NIL to bring in top-shelf transfer classes.