Unbelievable:Kirby Smart announce his resignation and departure from Georgia Bulldogs today after he was ………
Tennessee Vols did better in an important area this offseason than any other team in the SEC
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Tennessee Vols did better in an important area this offseason than any other team in the SEC
Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart puffed his chest out a bit this week at the Regions Tradition Golf Tournament in Hoover, AL when he suggested that his program isn’t very active in the NCAA transfer portal.
“We’re not really real active in it (the transfer portal),” said Smart. “We kind of retain our roster and worry about the kids we got.”
Smart’s comment came off as if he was suggesting that Georgia is above using the transfer portal.
It’s true that Georgia isn’t very active in the transfer portal — the Bulldogs had 24 players leave via the transfer portal this offseason and they added just nine players from the portal (per The Athletic).
But Georgia wasn’t the least active team in the portal this offseason.
Instead, that was the Tennessee Vols, a program that lost the fewest amount of players to the portal of any team in the SEC.
The Vols lost just 15 players to the portal this offseason. The next closest SEC team was Missouri with 19 players lost to the portal (every other SEC team, including Oklahoma and Texas, lost at least 22 players to the portal).
Tennessee added eight players from the portal, the fewest of any SEC team except LSU, which added just seven players while losing 27 (a reminder that LSU head coach Brian Kelly made it clear this week that the Tigers aren’t in the market of “buying” players from the portal).
Smart is right that the Bulldogs aren’t super active in the portal compared to some other teams, but they were more active than the Vols.
The fact that Tennessee did such a great job of retaining most of its roster, while adding a couple of players at obvious positions of need (mostly the secondary and the tight end position), is further proof of the incredibly strong culture that Josh Heupel and his staff have built in Knoxville.
The portal is a way of life these days for college football coaches. And the Vols have shown they’re willing to utilize the portal when necessary. But Heupel and his staff are still primarily building Tennessee’s roster through high school recruiting.
Georgia has the same approach under Smart. Right now, though, the Vols are doing just a little bit better than the Bulldogs when it comes to being “not real active” in the transfer portal.
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