Transfer QBs who could face their old teams, ranked by ZEST

Though major college sports do not have the dreaded TRANSFER EPIDEMIC that the suits like to use as a scare tactic, it is true that highly rated QB recruits are pretty likely to end up changing schools. There’s only one football to snap at each school, after all.

With a real flurry of big names sailing through the Multiversal Transfer Portal of late, let’s review some of the popping-est potential bowl season reunions for 2019 or 2020 or so.

This is far from an exhaustive list (apologies to everyone yearning to see Kansas’ Peyton Bender vs. Washington State, Indiana’s Jack Tuttle vs. Utah, and so forth), and I very well might’ve missed a really good one, so throw any other heat in the comments as well.

Blake Barnett, 2015’s No. 1 QB recruit, threw 19 passes for the Tide and five for Arizona State before landing at USF. Why is Oklahoma also here? Because that’s where the guy who replaced him at Alabama now resides (see No. 1 on this list). Barnett makes the list because of his high pedigree and breadth of options.

2017 Irish starter Brandon Wimbush lost his gig to Ian Book. But if these two teams were to meet in a big bowl game, I think the internet might not even notice the reunion, since it’d be too busy pondering whether it hates the ancient blueblood school or the loudmouth upstart school more.

Freshman Jacob Eason was UGA’s future until subsequent freshman Jake Fromm became UGA’s future. I don’t know if BEEF FACTOR would be super high here, partly since this transfer meant a move back home to Seattle for Eason.

Teams try to avoid agreeing to bowl games that have too much personal distress on the line (this is why the inevitable Texas-Texas A&M reunion ain’t coming in some mid-tier bowl), but the New Year’s Six games are a different story. Washington could win the Pac-12. Georgia could win the SEC. This is plausible.

New Canes QB Tathan “Tate” Martell was a Tebow-esque goal line QB for the Buckeyes as a redshirt freshman. Adding some considerable spice: Martell and new Ohio State QB Justin Fields might have some degree of personal animosity as well, publicly visible via social media subs.

What a journalism school that would be, and we’d never hear the end of it. Before Trevor Lawrence pushed Kelly Bryant to Mizzou, the two of them pushed former five-star Hunter Johnson back to the Midwest.

Lawrence vs. Bryant was a major story line throughout most of the 2018 calendar year, and it’s quite clear Clemson made the right choice, but there’d be some tension to this one.

Five-star Fields leaves his home state after a freshman season in which his role was limited to little more than handing off and running one of the costliest fake punts of all time. If Fields ends up winning big at Ohio State, and if we were to learn that fake punt happened to be the last straw before his transfer, then it’d go down as easily the costliest.

Another potential Playoff reunion.

Shea Patterson’s Oxford exit in the wake of NCAA sanctions went beyond normal paperwork squabbling and institutional pettiness. The school objected to Patterson becoming eligible immediately at Michigan, but the NCAA decided it liked the idea of Patterson playing more than it liked the idea of agreeing with Ole Miss.

Also, this can actually happen in some bowl game, now that Ole Miss’ ban is done.

When Jalen Hurts saved Bama’s season in relief of Tua Tagovailoa, mere months after Tagovailoa had done the reverse against the same opponent in the same building, we sure thought we’d just seen an ending too over-the-top legendary for Hollywood.

But there is ACTUALLY A PRETTY GOOD CHANCE that their story can reach an even more ridiculous new level.

Tagovailoa’s Bama will be favored to win the SEC again. Hurts’ Oklahoma will be favored to win the Big 12 again. The two are in the early top six on the national title odds board, and if you were to only give each conference one seed, they’d be in the top four.

Within 24 months, we really might see Tagovailoa replace Hurts in the title game, Hurts replace Tagovailoa in the SEC Championship, and (let’s aim as high as possible) Hurts face Tagovailoa in the title game. That’s absurd