South Carolina Football: Gamecock targets making transfer portal commitment announcements

When the transfer portal is open, the news cycle is virtually never-ending. Players are entering the portal, taking their names out of the portal, visiting new programs, announcing top schools, and making commitments at every turn. South Carolina football has dispensed a large number of transfer offers, and this past weekend began a stretch of huge portal visitors in Columbia.

Since then, multiple Gamecock targets have made announcements about their future destinations.

Most well-known, obviously, are the seven commitments that have announced their intentions to play for USC next season: defensive tackles Jerome Simmons (Highland Community College) and Deandre Jules (Pittsburgh), wide receivers Jayden McGowan (Vanderbilt) and Jared Brown (Coastal Carolina), and running backs Rocket Sanders (Arkansas), Oscar Adaway (North Texas), and Jawarn Howell (South Carolina State).

However, there have been other Gamecock targets that have made decisions to go elsewhere.

Early targets like Justin Mayer (Colorado), Gerquan Scott (Ole Miss), Will Lee (committed to Texas A&M), Kris Mitchell (Notre Dame), Pooh Paul (Ole Miss), Marcus Carroll (Missouri), RJ Oben (Notre Dame), and Matthew Bedford (Colorado) all came off the South Carolina football transfer portal recruiting board rather quickly.

In the past couple of days, some additional targets joined them.

Tyler Neville, a Nate Adkins clone at tight end, would have made a nice compliment to the playmaking efforts of Josh Simon. However, Neville announced that he was committing to his home state Virginia Cavaliers and head coach Tony Elliott.

Big offensive tackle Jonathan Mendoza also came off the board recently. The former Yale teammate of Gamecock Nick Gargiulo (who could return to the South Carolina football program with a medical redshirt waiver from the NCAA) announced a commitment to Lousiville.

Former Vanderbilt wide receiver Will Sheppard was on Gamecock fans' wish lists in this year's transfer portal class. However, he found his way to Coach Prime and the Colorado Buffaloes.

The Gamecocks are still in the game for several other transfer portal targets.

Cyrus Allen (wide receiver, Louisiana Tech) hasn't made it to campus yet but plans to be in Columbia soon. Targets like LT Overton (defensive lineman, Texas A&M), Brady Hunt (tight end, Ball State), Monroe Mills (offensive lineman, Texas Tech), Kyle Kennard (EDGE, Georgia Tech), and Gerald Kilgore (defensive back, Tennessee Tech) all had good experiences in Columbia or are on campus right now.

The Gamecocks are rolling, and South Carolina football fans hope that can continue. An 8th transfer portal commitment was announced by Shane Beamer with his patented #WelcomeHome tweets, but that pledge has not come forward as of yet.