McLaughlin: Oregon Highlights The Transfer Portal vs. High School Recruiting Debate
By SPENCER McLAUGHLIN
Contributor, 750 The Game
Oregon signed 19 kids in their 2025 recruiting class from the high school ranks. They’ve also added 9 transfers. That poses an ongoing and unsettled debate in this sport:
What’s the right ratio for adding transfers compared to allowing young talent to develop? Does it vary season to season? Is adding a ready-to-go transfer always the right move to be as competitive as possible?
History tells us that not all of Oregon’s transfers are going to be highly impactful players for the Ducks this Fall. Knowing which guys will have a minimal role is hard to ascertain in January, and is sometimes dependent on injuries.
I look at WR Malik Benson (Florida State) and OT Alex Harkey (Texas State) as transfer question marks. Benson hasn’t ever reached his full potential after a stellar 2 years of JUCO ball. He was buried on the depth chart at Alabama and then went to the most inept passing game in the country at Florida State in 2024. Does he finally have a 500+ yard season at the P4 level? Or do young guys like Jurrion Dickey, Kyler Kasper, or Jeremiah McClellan finally start to emerge and eat up some of his targets?
Harkey grades as a 4-star transfer at offensive tackle, coming in along with Nevada transfer Isaiah World at the same position. Oregon is losing its bookend tackles from the last 2 seasons in Josh Conerly and Ajani Cornelius to the NFL. Can Oregon fans put their names on the depth chart in sharpie just yet? Maybe, but we also saw Gernorris Wilson see meaningful snaps this year in the jumbo package–just as Josh Conerly did before becoming Oregon’s starting left tackle for 2 seasons. Kawika Rogers is also a multi-year player on the OL who was a tackle coming out of high school before moving to guard this season.
The online debate surrounding portal additions vs developing in-house talent rages on a daily basis. The portal is still very new in college football and gets plenty of pushback from certain segments of the CFB world who don’t like it. Programs like Colorado get all sorts of negative attention because of their reliance on the portal and comparative disregard for high school recruiting.
For Dan Lanning and his staff, he’s obviously not concerned with how things are viewed by the outside world. His priority is to make Oregon as competitive as possible on a yearly basis, and after all that’s how his job is assessed anyway. But I always wonder if there’s a calculation in the back of his mind with a couple of position groups.
Oregon is already popping up as a preseason Top 10 team on way-too-early lists for 2025. That’s understandable after Oregon just won the Big 10 amidst a 13-0 season and #1 ranking for most of the season, including in the Playoff. I expect Oregon to be good, but I don’t see their roster being as talented as it was this past season.
Oregon is losing 7 linemen from both sides of the ball, a handful of pass catchers, its top 6 secondary players and more. Could 2025 almost serve as a soft reset for the Ducks to load up in 2026 for another serious national title push? Maybe, just maybe, Lanning secretly sees this roster that way. Remember, they’re also working in a new QB (likely Dante Moore) who has never started a full season of college football before. That’s a stark contrast from Bo Nix and Dillon Gabriel over the last 3 years.
Perhaps Lanning and the staff will play more young guys. Maybe some transfers will have a short leash before they get pulled. Or perhaps once again Duck fans will get accustomed to the brand new faces that weren’t on the team last year because they’ll be making plays very quickly.
Whatever the case ends up being, it’s more than fair to say Oregon’s staff has earned the benefit of the doubt from its fans when it comes to acquiring and developing talent.
I don’t think that’s changing.
Spencer McLaughlin is an Oregon Ducks football contributor to 750 The Game. He also hosts the “Locked On Oregon Ducks” and “Locked On College Football” podcasts and has work featured throughout the season here.