Ole Miss might have most transfer-heavy roster in college football

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin has rightfully earned the “Portal King” moniker. We’ve seen programs like Florida State, Louisville, and Colorado very much go all-in on college football’s free agency model but no one does it better than the Rebels.

Armed with a strong NIL collective, Ole Miss has chosen to recruit the portal aggressively. According to On3‘s recruiting database, Kiffin’s program has added 67 transfers to the roster over the last three offseasons. A closer look at the roster reveals that most of the team’s impact players started their careers somewhere else.

Ole Miss has 39 FBS transfers on the roster

Player	Former School
Rashad Amos	Mississippi State/Miami (Ohio)
Trey Amos	Louisiana/Alabama
Yam Banks	South Alabama
Ulysses Bentley IV	SMU
Julius Buelow	Washington
Jadon Canady	Tulane
Khari Coleman	TCU
Jaxson Dart	USC
Micah Davis	Air Force/Utah State
Logan Diggs	Notre Dame/LSU
TJ Dottery	Clemson
Chris Graves Jr.	Miami
Isaiah Hamilton	Texas Southern/Houston
Chris Hardie	Jacksonville State
Tre Harris	Louisiana Tech
Walker Howard	LSU
Jared Ivey	Georgia Tech
Nate Kalepo	Washington
Key Lawrence	Tennessee/Oklahoma
Louis Moore	Indiana
Walter Nolen	Texas A&M
Henry Parrish Jr.	Miami
Chris Paul Jr.	Arkansas
JJ Pegues	Auburn
Charlie Pollock	Nevada
Diego Pounds	North Carolina
Devin Price	Florida Atlantic
Caden Prieskorn	Memphis
John Saunders Jr.	Miami (Ohio)
Gerquan Scott	Southern Miss
Carter Short	Alabama
Jordan Smart	North Texas
Akelo Stone	Georgia Tech
Domonique Thomas	Georgia State
Brandon Turnage	Alabama/Tennessee
Princely Umanmielen	Florida
Jordan Watkins	Louisville
Antwane Wells Jr.	James Madison/South Carolina
Dae’Quan Wright	Virginia Tech

Ole Miss has found multi-year transfers (Jaxson Dart, JJ Pegues, Jordan Watkins, Jared Ivey, Khari Coleman, and Ulysses Bentley IV) who have stayed around for three years and helped the program establish stability and culture. We’ve also seen Ole Miss go out and find impact first-year players (Princely Umanmielen, Antwane Wells Jr., and Walter Nolen) who will not be on the roster next year. Ole Miss has found star power but also used the free agency tool to address depth concerns at running back, offensive line, and in the secondary.

Kiffin has a clear roster-building strategy and it has helped create a team that has legitimate national championship aspirations.

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