Jaxson Dart came to Ole Miss and the SEC for one reason: "It gets you more prepared for the NFL"

The transfer portal has created a whole new world to college football and Jaxson Dart is fresh from experiencing that Wild West environment.

When Ole Miss’ latest quarterback made the decision to leave Southern California and find a new home for his college career there was one conference and one conference alone on his destination list: the Southeastern Conference.

Now, that’s no bold claim by any stretch of the imagination as the SEC is the premier landing spot and the desired conference for mostly all high school football players — and now transfer portalees.

Dart never watched a lot of SEC football growing up. It was mostly PAC-12 for the Utah native. But the decision was solely forward-thinking based and was looking out for the best interest of his long-term career when wanting to come to the SEC.

“But I knew that when I was going into the portal I wanted to go to the SEC,” Dart said. “It gets you developed for the NFL. I feel like if you can be successful in the SEC then it’s an easier transition to the NFL. You play a lot better competition week-in-week-out.

“You play really cool environments and you got to make a lot of adjustments. There’s some games in some conferences you can just have better athletes than another team and you can just outplay them because you have better athletes. In (the SEC) it’s more about seeing. You have to schematically beat them. You have to be smarter than them because they have just as good of players as you do.”

As for the whole transfer portal process itself, Dart said it was a whole different experience from his high school recruitment.

Dart’s recruitment out of high school came late and there were not a lot of suitors for him to choose from, leading him to sign with USC. When he got the email that he was officially in the portal, there were more than a few coaches hitting him up.

“Literally the second I got the email I was going into the portal I couldn’t even look at my phone. I just needed space,” Dart said. “It was crazy because you have an idea you’re going into the portal before you do, obviously. So you kind of have schools you’re interested in before being in contact with them. You try to be respectful to all the coaches but you kind of have the select few you’re really looking at. Right when I (went in) that was something I never thought would happen.”

The transfer portal has mostly circled around a lot of graduate transfers or upperclassmen looking to play somewhere different for their final year of eligibility.

Dart is an outlier, for now, as he was making a choice for much longer than one football season. In his freshman season he was going to be enrolled in two different schools in the same academic calendar year, and also picking his new home for potentially up to three years.

These cases are rare with the portal, but Dart had much more to weigh and took his time before making the decision to come to Oxford.

“I thought going to SC it was going to be a lot more stable with the coaching staff,” Dart said. “I don’t have just one year, so I’ve got to make the decision based on what was best for me for possibly the next three years. I was trying to find a stable place and I’d be able to surround myself with people who’d help me grow and develop as a player and a person. So, because of that it took a little bit more time just because I had to dive into deeper things and try to get as much information as I can.”