One year removed from his transfer to Oklahoma State, Alan Bowman sat in the stands of NRG Stadium in Houston for the College Football Playoff national championship, watching his former Michigan Wolverines teammates win the title through a unique lens.
“It’s a little weird,” he said, “but just more excited than anything. … I know the grind they go through every day.”
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After transferring from Texas Tech in 2021, Bowman spent two seasons as a reserve at Michigan. He stayed the course to get his master’s degree from the Ross School of Business even as he slid down the depth chart. In January 2023, Bowman transferred to Oklahoma State, where he will return as the starting quarterback for his seventh season of eligibility in 2024, utilizing extra years from a medical hardship waiver and the pandemic-altered 2020 season.
There’s no sense of animosity as Bowman talks about his experience watching his former team win the national title. He says he “couldn’t be happier” with his new team in Stillwater. But split loyalty? That’s present in more ways than one.
“It was Penn State forever until I went to Texas Tech and we were big Texas Tech fans,” said Bowman, whose father Kirk won a national championship as a tight end at Penn State in 1982. “I don’t know how I’m going to raise my son. I really don’t know. The loyalty issue is a thing.”
Of the 2,303 FBS scholarship players who entered the transfer portal during the 2022-23 cycle, roughly 300 were repeat transfers, per The Athletic’s Max Olson. More than 400 multiple-time FBS transfers have entered the portal in the current cycle, and that’s before the spring window opens Tuesday.
In 2021, the NCAA passed a rule allowing a free one-time transfer for all athletes, including undergraduates. Non-graduate athletes subsequently needed a waiver to be granted immediate eligibility as a multi-time transfer. But after legal challenges, that requirement was suspended for 2024-25 in December. The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach reported on April 8 that the NCAA could adopt emergency legislation to solidify that change as a rule.
Though the extra season of eligibility granted to all athletes in 2020 because of the pandemic made multiple transfers more common, the increased prevalence could be here to stay. As more one-stop, two-stop and even three-stop college football players fill rosters, it leaves an interesting question: Which school do these athletes identify with as alumni?
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Chase Brice spent two years backing up Trevor Lawrence at Clemson, once leading a 10-point comeback win against Syracuse to keep the Tigers’ 2018 national championship season alive. But sitting behind a highly touted future NFL Draft pick didn’t leave the door open for many other heroics.
Knowing he needed starting experience, Brice sped up his graduation from Clemson to 2020 and transferred to Duke. After one season with the Blue Devils, he entered the portal again and landed at App State.
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When Duke beat Clemson 28-7 last season, Brice admitted a bias toward the Tigers. He’s a Clemson graduate whose uncle, Mickey Conn, is the co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach there. But when Clemson plays App State in Week 2 of the 2024 season, Brice will face another crossroads.
“I’ll probably have a custom jersey made,” Brice said, “or something crazy where I can’t lose.”
That is, as long as another jersey can fit into Brice’s closet — “The excess gear adds up,” he said.
Even though transferring offered Brice an opportunity to start, the process wasn’t as simple as trading in one jersey for another. It’s the “little things” that make it tough, he said.
“You’re picking up your whole life and a place that offered you a spot on the team. You made friends there outside of football, clubs and things like that,” Brice said. “It’s almost restarting that process.”
Part of that process is learning the layout of a new place. That could mean anything from navigating a new campus — Bowman regularly got lost in Oklahoma State’s football facility — to adapting to new weather — Georgia native Daniel Imatorbhebhe (USC-Illinois-Kansas State) had a staffer meet him at AutoZone to get a brush for his car after arriving at K-State in the middle of a snowstorm — to absorbing a new playbook.
“At Georgia, we had iPads with the full playbook on it, and I learn very visually, so I’m learning the playbook as quick as I can in that iPad,” said Josh Moran (Georgia-New Mexico State-Delaware), who claims loyalty to Georgia because he spent the most time there and is back for law school.
“Then I get to Delaware and they tell me, ‘Oh yeah, we don’t really have a playbook for our players because we don’t want the offensive playbook to get loose, so we just draw it up on the board and you have to come to meetings.’ And I’m like … where’s the meeting room?”
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The transfer portal has quickly become a staple of modern college football, but it can nevertheless be a tricky adjustment for fans accustomed to loyalty and tradition in the sport.
Ovie Oghoufo transferred from Notre Dame to Texas to LSU across five college seasons, all schools with rich athletic history. For him, loyalty is defined by the milestone each school represents in his journey: Notre Dame gave him his degree, Texas catapulted his career and LSU closed the chapter (and reunited him with Brian Kelly, his former head coach at Notre Dame).
“Each place is so different from the other. They’re all unique so they all get their unique type of loyalty from me,” Oghoufo said. “It will just be hard when they play each other.”
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Quarterback Tyler Shough also feels split loyalty. Shough transferred to Louisville in December after two seasons with Oregon and three at Texas Tech. His mother Dana grew up in Oregon and raised Shough on the green and yellow. He signed with the Ducks as a four-star QB in the Class of 2018.
Shough won a Pac-12 championship as Oregon’s starter in 2020, then had an injury-altered stint at Texas Tech. He says he “didn’t necessarily want to leave” each school he was at, but circumstances with coaches and injuries drove him to the portal to try to improve his NFL Draft stock.
“In an ideal dream world, you play for one team and you’re ride or die, bleed whatever those colors are. I feel like I’m kind of blended in that way,” Shough said. “You definitely share and take bits and pieces from whatever school you’re at with you.”
The school where athletes spent the COVID-19-altered 2020 season deserves an asterisk next to it, too. Imatorbhebhe transferred to Illinois in the summer of 2020 to reunite with his brother Josh after a five-year career at USC. He never attended a class in Champaign and transferred the following season to Kansas State, where many of his classes were still online. Friends walked Imatorbhebhe around Kansas State’s campus for the first time when he went back to visit last summer — two years after his college career ended. So although Imatorbhebhe claims Illinois and Kansas State as stops along the way, his strongest pull is to the Trojans.
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“If we were at USC right now, I could show you all the spots. I can give you things that aren’t on the tour guide,” Imatorbhebhe said. “The other places, because of the COVID landscape, I couldn’t.”
Coaching changes are another common reason players enter the portal. Zach Calzada (Texas A&M-Auburn-Incarnate Word) had a one-year stint with the Tigers when offensive coordinator Austin Davis — whom Calzada wanted to play for — left six weeks after he arrived. Malcolm Epps saw two coaching changes at two destinations (Tom Herman was fired from Texas, Clay Helton was fired from USC) before he ended his career at Pitt.
“I got loyalty to all three programs, honestly,” said Epps, who paused to weigh his options. “I root for all those guys. I’ve never hated on any school I left. I wish all them the best.”
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Time spent at each school and where each athlete got their degree were the two most common factors that established loyalty among these multi-time transfers. Most of all, the athletes stressed their transfers weren’t planned but were a defining part of their playing careers.
“A lot of people that I talk to, on paper, they’re like, ‘Oh man, you went to all these different schools, are you a problem?'” Imatorbhebhe said. “And I get the opportunity to share them: ‘No, I actually have a really unique story and it’s something I’m grateful for.’
“I got to see different organizations and how they run and got to glean from the success in some and the areas that some could have done better.”
Editor’s note: This is part of a series of stories examining the transfer portal, NIL and their impact on college sports. The spring football transfer portal window is open from April 16-30. Find all transfer portal stories here.
(Top photo of Alan Bowman: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
