College QB Transfers To 6th Team In 6 Years With 9 Commitments

Clifton McDowell is officially committed to McNeese State after a wild journey in the transfer portal. It marks his sixth different school in six years.

And that only begins to scratch the surface of his insane college football career!

McDowell was a three-star quarterback recruit in the Class of 2019. Louisiana-Lafayette received his commitment out of high school over Georgetown, Texas Southern and Louisiana-Monroe.

Unfortunately, tragedy stuck during McDowell’s two seasons in Lafayette. D.J. Looney, an assistant coach who helped recruit him to the university, passed away during a team practice. It was something that caused him trauma and his strong faith guided him to make a change.

McDowell transferred down to Kilgore College (JUCO) for a year and totaled 1,044 yards in 10 games with nine touchdowns. He later committed to Central Arkansas, where he threw just 13 passes and scored three total touchdowns in only six appearances.

Those were stops numbers two and three.

Clifton McDowell’s career gets even crazier.

The fourth-year signal-caller decided to transfer, again, after one year with the Bears.

McDowell committed to Southern University on April 30, 2023. He decommitted on May 12.

And then McDowell committed to Montana on May 15.

His time in Missoula was a great success. The 6-foot-4, 225-pound quarterback was named the Big Sky Newcomer of the Year. He completed 160 passes for 2,026 yards and 13 touchdowns, and ran for 753 yards and nine touchdowns. Montana went 13-1 en route to the FCS Championship!

Buckle up, it gets even weirder.

Montana was McDowell’s fourth program and fifth commitment, including Southern. He decided to hit the transfer portal after just one season and ended up at Temple in January.

It was school No. 5 and commitment No. 6.

However, McDowell lasted only two months in Philadelphia. He re-entered the transfer portal in March.

Not long thereafter, reports started to surface about a reunion at Montana. McDowell wanted to go back and actually teased his return on X, formerly known as Twitter.

According to Colter Nuanez of ESPN Missoula, the Grizzlies were going to hold a vote.

As I reported yesterday on this show, he is sniffing around Montana and perhaps trying to make his way back onto the Griz football team. The last we had heard, sources say that they were going to have a team vote to see if McDowell could come back to the Griz roster.
— Colter Nuanez

Although nothing was ever made official, it was essentially McDowell’s seventh commitment.

Well, the team vote must not have gone in his favor. Either that or something fell through.

McDowell did not end up back at Montana.

Instead, he was spotted at Prairie View A&M’s spring practice on Wednesday. Head coach Bubba McDowell (no relation) later confirmed that Clifton McDowell committed to his program, according to a report from Sports Illustrated. The former Louisiana, Kilgore, Central Arkansas, Southern, Montana and Temple quarterback was heading back home to Texas to play for the Panthers as of Thursday night.

And then… he posted an official (we’ll see) commitment to McNeese on Saturday!