FSU football: Top 10 best transfer portal additions in portal era

FSU football head coach Mike Norvell took over an FSU team who lacked talent, had bad culture, and many holes on its roster. His staff also had to deal with a global pandemic in his first year on top of all of that. Ironically, Norvell's arrival in Tallahassee coincided with the NCAA opening the transfer portal shortly afterward, and Norvell saw a path to drastically improve FSU's roster. Norvell knew it would be difficult to attract top high school players to FSU under the conditions inherited, plus it would take more time for most high school players to develop enough physically to make a difference on the field.

He opted to go the transfer portal route with the 2021 recruiting class, and it was a game-changer. It's a path he continued to use more effectively than any other college head coach in the game. It's one of the main reasons FSU football went from 3-6, 5-7, 10-3, and 13-0 in his first four years without signing a top 10 high school recruiting class. It's also a big reason why FSU had 10 players drafted in the 2024 NFL Draft. Here are the top 10 transfer portal acquisitions in the transfer portal era. (Sidenote: Jordan Travis got to FSU before the portal became wide open).