A Matter of Loyalty: College Football Transfers Navigate the Complexities of Playing for Multiple Schools

Alan Bowman saw his old Michigan Wolverines teammates win the College Football Playoff national championship from a unique perspective while sitting in the stands at NRG Stadium in Houston, one year after transferring to Oklahoma State.

“It’s a little weird,” he said, “but just more excited than anything. … I know the grind they go through every day.”

Following his 2021 transfer from Texas Tech, Bowman played reserve football for two seasons at Michigan. Despite falling down the depth chart, he persisted and earned his master’s degree from the Ross School of Business. Bowman transferred to Oklahoma State in January 2023. He will use extra years from a medical hardship waiver and the 2020 season that was disrupted by the pandemic to return as the starting quarterback for his seventh season of eligibility in 2024.

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.”

Approximately 300 of the 2,303 FBS scholarship players who used the transfer site in the 2022–2023 cycle were repeat transfers, according to Max Olson of The Athletic. Even before the spring window starts on Tuesday, more than 400 FBS transfers that have occurred more than once have already been recorded on the platform in this cycle.

A law permitting free one-time transfers for all athletes, including students, was passed by the NCAA in 2021. A waiver was therefore required for non-graduate athletes to be eligible for instant multi-time transfer status. However, that obligation was put on hold for 2024–25 in December due to legal concerns.On April 8, Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic reported that the NCAA may pass emergency legislation to formally establish the decision as a regulation.

Multiple transfers became more likely in 2020 because the epidemic awarded all athletes an additional season of eligibility, but it is possible that this increased occurrence is here to stay. An intriguing question arises when more college football players join teams as one-, two-, or even three-stop players: whose university do these athletes identify as alumni?

At Clemson, Chase Brice supported Trevor Lawrence for two years. He once spearheaded a 10-point comeback victory against Syracuse to preserve the Tigers’ 2018 national title season. However, there were not many more opportunities for heroics when seated behind a highly anticipated future NFL Draft pick.

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.

Last season, after Duke defeated Clemson 28–7, Brice acknowledged having a soft spot for the Tigers. He graduated from Clemson University, where his uncle Mickey Conn works as the safeties coach and co-defensive coordinator. However, Brice will have to make another decision when Clemson takes on App State in the second week of the 2024 season.

“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.

Transferring was not as easy as swapping one jersey for another, even though it gave Brice a chance to get started. He claimed that the “little things” are what make it difficult.

“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.”

Acquiring knowledge of a new location’s layout is a part of that process. This could entail anything from getting used to a new campus—Bowman would frequently get lost in Oklahoma State’s football stadium—to adjusting to new weather. Daniel Imatorbhebhe (USC-Illinois-Kansas State), a native of Georgia, once requested that a staff member meet him at AutoZone so he could pick up a car brush after arriving at K-State in the middle of a snowstorm.

“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?”

Although the transfer site has swiftly established itself as a mainstay of contemporary college football, supporters used to tradition and devotion to the game may find it difficult to accept.

Ovie Oghoufo spent five collegiate seasons transferring between Notre Dame, Texas, and LSU—all of which had illustrious sports histories. For him, devotion is determined by the turning point each institution embodies in his career: LSU ended the chapter on his career and brought him back to his previous head coach at Notre Dame, Brian Kelly; Notre Dame awarded him his degree; and Texas launched his career.

“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.”

QB Tyler Shough experiences conflicting allegiance as well. Shough spent two seasons at Oregon and three at Texas Tech before transferring to Louisville in December. Shough was nurtured by his mother Dana on the green and yellow, having grown up in Oregon. As a four-star quarterback in the Class of 2018, he inked a contract with the Ducks.

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.”

There should be an asterisk next to the school where athletes played during the 2020 season that was affected by COVID-19. After a five-year stint at USC, Imatorbhebhe went to Illinois in the summer of 2020 to be closer to his brother Josh. The next season, he transferred to Kansas State, where many of his classes were still offered online, having never attended a class in Champaign. When Imatorbhebhe returned to Kansas State for a vacation this summer, two years after his undergraduate career ended, friends took him on his first tour of the campus. Thus, even though Imatorbhebhe lists Kansas State and Illinois as pit stops, the Trojans are the object of his greatest attraction.

“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.”

Another typical reason why players visit the portal is changes in coaching. After wanting to play for offensive coordinator Austin Davis, Zach Calzada (Texas A&M-Auburn-Incarnate Word) signed a one-year contract with the Tigers, but Davis left six weeks after Calzada’s arrival. Malcolm Epps saw two coaching changes before concluding his tenure at Pitt (Clay Helton was fired from USC, and Tom Herman was fired from Texas).

“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.”

The two most prominent elements that established loyalty among these multi-time transfers were the amount of time each athlete spent at each school and the location of their degree. The sportsmen emphasized that although their moves were not anticipated, they were an important aspect of their playing careers beyond everything else.

“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 article is a part of a series that looks at NIL, the transfer portal, and how they affect collegiate athletics. April 16–30 is when the spring football transfer site is open.Here are all of the transfer portal stories.

(Top photo of Alan Bowman: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)