Historic College Football Program Loses 36 Players to Transfer Portal After Bowl Game Disaster

Roster management in college football has become a game of survival. The transfer portal era has turned the offseason dilemma where programs must not only recruit high school talent but also retain their own roster. With the winter transfer portal window mostly closed (except for graduate transfers), several top programs, including Nebraska, Oklahoma, Michigan, and Alabama, have seen a large number of players enter the portal. Nobody has come within reach of hitting Colorado’s 56 departures from 2023. But this Huskies’ biggest rival with 4 conf. titles were very close and led this season’s leading departures.

Clemson (five) and SMU (three) had the least transfer portal entries. On3 broke down the news of the top transfer portal departures by school. This season’s leader is the Washington State Cougars, which has now seen 36 players enter the transfer portal. The exodus was set in motion when Jake Dickert left Pullman to take over at Wake Forest, leaving the Cougars rudderless at a time when their Pac-12 affiliation had already crumbled into uncertainty.

Coaching changes almost always lead to roster churn, but this level of turnover is unprecedented for a program that, just a year ago, seemed to be on stable ground. With only Oregon State left as a fellow Pac-12 survivor, Washington State’s identity crisis deepened, making it nearly impossible to keep the roster intact.

The Cougars finished 2024 with an 8-5. The tipping point came in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego, a disastrous 52-35 loss to Syracuse. While quarterback Zevi Eckhaus put up respectable numbers—throwing for 363 yards, 3 touchdowns, and 2 picks—he was completely outdueled by Kyle McCord. The Syracuse gunslinger, already generating NFL buzz ahead of the Shrine Bowl, shredded the Cougars’ secondary for 453 yards and 5 touchdowns with surgical precision. The game was a defensive meltdown of the highest order, and the fallout was swift. Players hit the portal en masse, and suddenly, Washington State’s depth chart looked like a ghost town.

New HC Jimmy Rogers, the former South Dakota State head coach, is now tasked with picking up the pieces. Rogers has done his best to stop the bleeding, bringing in 20 new players so far, including 15 who followed him from SDSU. But the numbers tell a harsh truth: Washington State is in full-scale rebuild mode.

Retaining Eckhaus was a crucial win, but the Cougars are still dangerously thin at key positions, particularly on defense. The trenches, in particular, were hit hard by the departures, and unless reinforcements arrive in the spring, Washington State could be staring down a brutal 2025 campaign.

The Cougars will need to embrace the new reality of college football, where roster fluidity is constant and stability is a luxury.

Zevi Eckhaus had to step up for Washington State after a cold shoulder from ex-coach

Football can be a brutal business, and Zevi Eckhaus knows that firsthand. The Washington State quarterback is gearing up to take over the starting job in Pullman for the 2025 season, but his path to this moment took an unexpected turn—one that involved being completely ghosted by the coach who recruited him.

When Jake Dickert, Eckhaus’ former head coach, left Washington State to take the same job at Wake Forest, there was immediate uncertainty about the future. Eckhaus, a former 3-star recruit, had been patiently waiting his turn, trusting WSU’s track record with QBs like Cam Ward and Drew Bledsoe. But when Dickert packed his bags, he didn’t just leave town—he left Eckhaus behind, too.

Less than 24 hours after the Cougars’ Holiday Bowl loss, the 6-foot-0, 200-pound QB made his decision. He entered the transfer portal, hoping for a fresh start. And while some players might expect a call from their former coach to discuss a potential reunion, that call never came. Dickert never reached out. Not even a text. Playing for Wake Forest? Not even an option.

Then, just two days after entering the portal, Eckhaus pulled his name back. Now, with Washington State fully in his corner, Eckhaus has a real shot to prove what he’s made of in the Pac-12.