College football: Transfer portal’s winners and losers in 2019

We’re heading into the second full season of college football with the NCAA transfer portal in place, and its effects are now measurable.

Players are moving more often. Coaches are generally unhappy with the state of things. The system is probably in need of fixes, but if the goal was to empower the athletes, the transfer portal has done that.

On the field, seemingly every other starting quarterback will have come through the portal, including a number of high-profile starters. Multiple teams with playoff aspirations could be starting transfers at quarterback. Likewise, most of those teams have lost depth because of the churn created by the portal.

The Post looks at the winners and losers of the 2019 transfer portal.

Winner: The players

Say what you will about players only thinking about themselves or ducking competition. The transfer portal has been a strong step forward in the area the NCAA has historically lacked: player empowerment.

That’s not to say the portal isn’t without its flaws. The waiver system is a train wreck, first with people seemingly getting to play without sitting for no real reason, and now with inconsistent-at-best enforcement. The chaos created by it isn’t good for anyone.

But players getting to move if they’re in a situation that doesn’t work out, without being so beholden to the whims of coaches, is objectively good for them.

Loser: The coaches

This is now one of few areas over which the coaches don’t have total control. They can lose players whom they’ve spent time and energy recruiting — five-stars whom they thought would be longtime starters — because of how a freshman-year position battle goes.

The whimsical nature of the portal means this can happen anytime, not just causing lost depth but opening the program up to questions about why someone is transferring, or whether it’s inevitable. Good as it is for the players to be able to do what they want, it’s equally bad for the coaches to lose a facet of control.

Winner: Justin Fields

Fields is as close to a poster boy as the transfer portal has this season. After losing the quarterback job at Georgia to Jake Fromm, he moved to Ohio State and got immediate eligibility. He goes from one national power to another, and this time, with the starting job well in hand.

Though he must deal with the weight of expectation, and a first-year head coach in Ryan Day, Fields gets a chance to show everyone what he can do on the biggest stage. He can position himself as an obvious top pick down the line if things go well. All he has to do is win.

Loser: Ohio State

Though the Buckeyes nabbed the biggest prize on the market in Fields, their depth is paper-thin at quarterback … because they nabbed the biggest prize on the market in Fields.

Tate Martell and Matthew Baldwin both moved on to greener pastures, sensing they had little chance of starting with Fields on the team. That left Ohio State scouring the market for backups, and all it has now are Chris Chugunov and Gunnar Hoak, neither of whom has started more than five games in a season. If Fields goes down, its season will be in imminent jeopardy.

Winner: Oklahoma

Losing Kyler Murray is a lot easier when you can bring in a national title-winning quarterback to replace him.

Jalen Hurts was named the Sooners’ starting quarterback after coming over from Alabama. Hurts isn’t the same caliber of player as Murray, but he threw for over 2,000 yards twice with the Crimson Tide and has shown himself more than capable of leading a team to the promised land.

Loser: Michigan

Though the Wolverines brought in edge rusher Mike Danna as a grad transfer, losing former five-star Aubrey Solomon will hit hard for an interior defensive line that saw both of its starters graduate in 2018. Receiver Oliver Martin, expected to contribute in 2019, also left for Big Ten rival Iowa with little warning earlier this summer.

If that wasn’t enough, Jim Harbaugh got himself into trouble at Big Ten Media Days when he implied that some athletes exaggerate or fake mental health problems to get eligible, in what many thought was a dig at departed offensive lineman James Hudson. (Harbaugh later followed up with a Twitter post in which he reiterated his belief that student-athletes should be allowed a one-time transfer no matter what).

Winner: Missouri

Like the Sooners, Mizzou finds itself with a quarterback who lost a starting battle on a perennial playoff team. Kelly Bryant isn’t on quite the same level as Hurts, but the Tigers — who often find themselves pushing to get to eight wins — will be more than happy to take him.

In his lone year as a full-time starter in Death Valley, Bryant tallied 2,802 passing yards and helped Clemson to the College Football Playoff. Yes, he lost the job to Trevor Lawrence, but who wouldn’t have lost the job to Lawrence? In any case, Missouri finds itself the happy beneficiaries of the fallout.

Loser: Anyone who’s sitting a year

The NCAA’s process for handing out waiver claims has become impossible to decipher. A year ago, attorney Tom Mars was the guru of getting players immediate eligibility. Now, he works for the NCAA.

Players such as Luke Ford of Illinois, who said he wanted to transfer to be closer to his sick grandfather, got denied — in Ford’s case, reportedly because Champaign is over 100 miles from his hometown and his grandfather is not a nuclear family member. Meanwhile, a number of athletes who seemingly transferred because they weren’t able to win starting battles were granted immediate eligibility. It’s an area the NCAA must clear up — and soon.

Winner: Maryland

In his first year coaching the Terps, Mike Locksley’s starting quarterback, a receiver, a tight end and two linebackers all come via the portal with immediate eligibility.

Most important of those is obviously the quarterback, Josh Jackson, who comes from Virginia Tech and gives an immediate upgrade over the Kasim Hill-Tyrrell Pigrome duo that won just five games last year. The linebackers have pedigree as well — Keandre Jones from Ohio State and Shaq Smith from Clemson were both four-stars coming out of high school. If Locksley manages to make a bowl game, he’ll do it on the backs of transfers.

Loser: UCLA

In the non-quarterback division, UCLA lost perhaps the two best players to move this offseason in Jaelen Phillips and Mique Juarez, two former five-star recruits. Even worse, they lost Juarez to a Pac-12 rival, Utah.

That won’t help a defense that ranked 97th last year in Bill Connelly’s S&P+ (an advanced-stat ranking system), and it won’t help the Bruins get better after an abysmal 3-9 record under Chip Kelly’s tutelage. Nobody was expecting much from the Bruins this year anyway — that rebuild will take time — but this is a setback nonetheless.