College football transfer portal takeaways from the 2024 cycle, including a record-setting number of entries

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With the spring window coming to an end, here's what we learned from college football's 2024 transfer portal cycle.

The clock struck midnight Tuesday evening on college football's spring transfer portal. Unless an underclassman submitted his paperwork by 11:59 p.m., the transfer portal is closed for him.

There is an exception for graduate transfers, however, who have until 11:59 p.m. Wednesday to submit their names into the portal.

So, what did we learn from this cycle?

It was a record setter, for one. There are currently 3,843 names in the FBS transfer portal, per a source, which smashed the previous record of 3,502 set in the 2022-23 cycle.

More than 1,200 of those names entered during this spring's 15-day window, injecting a jolt into college football midway through spring practice for many programs.

Despite that deluge of entries, there haven't been as many impact players as you'd expect.

Only 11 of the top 100 players in the 247Sports Transfer Portal Rankings entered during the spring cycle, including just three of the top 50.

"It's just backups being traded," said one SEC director of player personnel. "We're trading starters in December and backups in April. If you're looking for a starter in this window, you're going to overpay."

And overpay teams have, though many of them have done so to prevent their best players from entering.

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