Oklahoma will conclude the 2024 college football season against Navy in the Armed Forces Bowl on Friday morning. The Sooners are going to play without more than 30% of their scholarship players.
Head coach Brent Venables revealed the final total on Thursday and it reflects a mass exodus to the transfer portal.
As the rules currently stand, college football teams are allowed to have 85 players on scholarship. Oklahoma will have only 54 scholarship players when it takes the field against the Naval Academy in Fort Worth. The other 31 players left the program all together in search of a new opportunity.
Yeah, this is modern college football. I don’t think any team’s going to be immune to that.
— Brent Venables
Venables is correct. Every team in the FBS is dealing with a transitional period. With the current structure of the winter transfer portal window, players are forced to leave their current teams prior to the postseason. The portal opened on Monday, Dec. 9 and will close on Saturday, Dec. 28.
Some teams allow players who entered the transfer portal to play in the bowl game while actively in the transfer portal. In most instances the players and the team agree to part ways, effective immediately.
It is the latter for Oklahoma. 34 players have entered the transfer portal in total. That number includes seven wide receivers, star linebacker Dasan McCollough and star defensive lineman Damonic Williams, among others.
Although the Sooners are at a disadvantage because of the turnover, they have enough guys to play. NFL rosters are capped at 53 players so fielding a team is not the issue. And, in some ways, these exhibition games present an opportunity for college football coaching staffs to get a look at some of the guys who might take on a bigger, more important role next season. It could be worse.
Still, Oklahoma will be without approximately one third of its roster. That is not ideal.