Transfer portal impact on 2025 NFL Draft: Power shift in college football evident through first three rounds

The transfer portal has changed how college football teams operate, and the impacts of the portal have become increasingly apparent in the NFL Draft. The way talent flows through college football now means the kind of player that makes their way into the NFL early in the draft tends to find its way to the big programs in college football first. 

The 2025 NFL Draft has served as a shining example of how the power structure of college football is continuing to evolve, with the power programs and conferences separating themselves from the pack. The SEC and Big Ten accounted for 26 of the 32 first-round picks and 66 of the 102 picks in the first three rounds of this year’s draft, making up an historic rate of early round picks. In total, 90 of the first 102 picks finished their careers at power conference programs (an astounding 88.2 percent). 

Here, we wanted to explore how those figures would differ for each conference and school if we looked at where each of those picks started their college careers rather than where they spent their final year in school to see how big an impact the transfer portal has had on the 2025 NFL Draft. 

Over the course of the first three rounds, the SEC (31) and Big Ten (25) still lead the way by a big margin but do have 10 fewer combined picks that started out in those conferences. Five of those picks started at the FCS level before moving up, including the top two picks in the draft — although Travis Hunter is a unique figure in being a 5-star recruit that opted to go to Jackson State. As for FBS conferences, the three that saw the most draft picks leave to go elsewhere were the Mountain West, Sun Belt and ACC. 

We can also see within each conferences who has been more aggressive adding top talent in the portal, who has developed their own players from high school recruiting to the draft and who has been hit the hardest by departing talent. Ole Miss led the way with transfers brought in and sent to the NFL with four, while Oregon was just behind with three and Ohio State and Texas had two each. On the other end, LSU, Virginia, Houston and UNLV had the most players transfer out and end up in the NFL Draft from somewhere else with two each. 

Below you’ll find the breakdowns of each conference for the first round, and then the first three rounds, with the number of players each school recruited out of high school that were drafted. In parentheses, we included the difference between that number and the number of players they put into the Draft from their 2024 rosters. 

First Round

SEC – 13 (-2)

Big Ten – 11 (+0)

FCS – 3 (+2)

Mountain West – 2 (+1)

Big 12 – 1 (-1)

ACC – 1 (-1)

American – 1 (+1)

• Houston – 1

Rounds 1-3

SEC – 31 (-6)

• LSU – 6 (+2)
• Georgia – 6 (+0)
• Texas – 4 (-2)
• Alabama – 3 (+0)
• Texas A&M – 3 (+0)
• South Carolina – 3 (+0)
• Missouri – 2 (+0)
• Tennessee – 1 (-1)
• Kentucky – 1 (+0)
• Ole Miss – 1 (-4)
• Florida – 1 (+1)

Big Ten – 25 (-4)

• Ohio State – 5 (-2)
• Michigan – 4 (-1)
• Oregon – 3 (-3)
• Penn State – 3 (+0)
• USC – 2 (+1)
• Minnesota – 2 (+0)
• Michigan State – 1 (+1)
• UCLA – 1 (-1)
• Purdue – 1 (+1)
• Illinois – 1 (+0)
• Iowa – 1 (+0)
• Maryland – 1 (+0)

ACC – 13 (+2)

Big 12 – 11 (-2)

FCS – 5 (+3)

Mountain West – 4 (+3)

• UNLV – 2 (+2)
• Boise State – 1 (+0)
• San Diego State – 1 (+1)

Sun Belt – 3 (+2)

American – 3 (+1)

Independent – 2 (+0)

Conference USA – 2 (+1)

MAC – 2 (+0)

D-II – 1 (+1)

• Hillsdale College – 1 (+1)