How many transfers are on the preseason All-SEC teams?

Jack Endries (Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images)

Nineteen of the 66 offensive and defensive players on the 2025 preseason All-SEC teams once started at different schools.

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The transfer portal has taken over the college football world—there’s no question about it—but the SEC continues to exemplify the idea that the best teams and players are developed.

Over 70% of the elite players in the conference have remained true to the team they originally committed to, and just three of the 22 first-team players started their college careers somewhere else.

This may be the case due to a few factors. Simply, the ones deciding these teams may have an inherent bias to select the players who have been doing it in the SEC longer. The three first-team selections who were once transfers—Tennessee CB Jermod McCoy, Missouri OL Cayden Green, and Vanderbilt TE Eli Stowers—have all played in the SEC for multiple seasons. Green and Stowers, funnily enough, started their careers at Oklahoma and Texas A&M.

Bias may be the case for certain selections. Someone like Jack Endries, Texas’ transfer from Cal this spring, is almost universally agreed upon as a top-three tight end heading into the year. Despite that, Georgia’s Oscar Delp, who had under 250 receiving yards last season, made the list ahead of him. A similar case can be made for Auburn’s Eric Singleton Jr., a player who has nearly eclipsed 1,500 yards as an underclassman in the ACC but is sitting on the third team.

Two positions specifically lack any transfers, and they’re probably ones you could guess. QB is completely made up of players who have stuck at one school, with South Carolina’s LaNorris Sellers, LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier, and Texas’ Arch Manning. The other position is the leader of the defense—the linebackers. Eight of the nine selected linebackers have stuck with one school, and the sole example, Ole Miss’ Princewill Umanmielen, is listed as an edge rusher pretty much everywhere you look. Running back and safety are also positions with just one transfer selected.

Another interesting note is the ratio between first-year and multi-year transfers. Just seven of those 19 players, guys like Endries and Umanmielen, played for different teams last season. Two of these players, LSU’s Aaron Anderson and Missouri’s Kevin Coleman Jr., played for other SEC schools in 2024. Really, just five players on these teams played outside of the SEC in 2024: two from Cal, one from Nebraska, one from Virginia Tech, and one from Georgia Tech. No one from the Big 12.

The All-SEC teams didn’t include top-20 transfers like Oklahoma QB John Mateer, Missouri EDGE Damon Wilson, Georgia WR Zachariah Branch, Texas A&M WR Kevin Concepcion, LSU WR Barion Brown, and LSU EDGE Patrick Payton.

Texas is well represented on the list generally, but their successes in the transfer portal have also been noted. Endries is, of course, a part of the third team, but former UTSA EDGE/LB Trey Moore was also selected as a defensive lineman. P Jack Bouwmeester also made his way onto the list as a second-teamer. Unsurprisingly, players like Maraad Watson, Cole Brevard, and Emmett Mosley didn’t quite make the list, but they all have the potential to elevate from transfer sleeper to All-SEC by the end of the year.

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Transfers have become an integral part of team building, but the current era may be more focused on using these transfers to fill weaknesses, not to become star players. While the likes of Oklahoma and Auburn spent big this cycle to add star players at major positions, the majority of the elite teams in the conference have stars that were brought in the old-fashioned way: the recruiting trail.