Shane Beamer and the South Carolina Gamecocks finished the 2024 season in remarkable fashion, even had some people thinking they had a real shot at making the College Football Playoff. However, after a tough loss in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl against Illinois, the Gamecocks have done the work so far in the offseason in spring ball.
Beamer didn't have to do a lot in the transfer portal, but he still managed to bring in the No. 15 ranked transfer portal team in college football and the No. 8 transfer portal team in the SEC according to 247Sports. South Carolina will have 17 new faces from the transfer portal, with six four-star transfers and 11 three-star transfers.
South Carolina lost some solid players to the portal and the NFL, but there has been a lot of talk about how good this team is, so how do they rank up against the rest of the SEC post-spring transfer portal?
After going winless in the SEC last season, Mississippi State still sits at the bottom of the SEC power rankings. Even though head coach Jeff Lebby brought in 23 players from the transfer portal, there is still a lot of work to be done for this team to be a contender.
Mark Stoops brought in a lot of players from the transfer portal, 26 to be exact, and seven of them are four-star recruits, but this football program needs even more help than that in order to feel like it can compete in 2025. Kentucky had a pretty good spring, and their work in the transfer portal is there, but this still doesn't seem ready to compete seriously in the SEC.
Even with the return of Diego Pavia and the different amounts of success Vanderbilt had last season, the Commodores didn't do much to build on that success, so competing near the top of the SEC seems unlikely for Vandy this next season. They will always have that win over Alabama, though.
Sam Pittman may have brought in 31 transfers from the portal, but only five of them are four-star transfers, while most of the rest are three-star transfers. Even with the sheer number of recruits he brought in, he only has the No. 9 class in the SEC, and it just doesn't seem to be enough for the Razorbacks to really compete.
The Auburn Tigers had one big hit in the transfer portal, which was bringing in Oklahoma quarterback Jackson Arnold, but looking at the rest of the team, there isn't much else to support Arnold. Head coach Hugh Freeze didn't do much in the transfer portal, but he does have a solid freshman class coming in, however, those freshmen need to develop.
The Missouri Tigers have seen two straight seasons of success in the SEC, something that seemed hard to come by for this team. Eli Drinkwitz has done some amazing things with this team, but with the number of players lost through the NFL and the transfer portal, it just doesn't seem like the Tigers will have the firepower this season to compete.
Tennessee has a real chance of going from a College Football Playoff team to struggling to get to a bowl game in 2025. After losing five-star quarterback Nico Iamaleava to UCLA through a whole NIL debacle, Heupel also lost 21 players in the transfer portal and only brought in seven, so something isn't even out there.
Mike Elko started to figure some things out with the Aggies in 2024 with an 8-5 season, and with a solid transfer portal class this season, along with good recruits coming in, Texas A&M could find some success. There are still a lot of unknowns, though, hence their lower ranking here.
After a tough start to the season, the Gators certainly came back adn finished the season strong, and it was all thanks to quarterback DJ Lagway. The young gunners were thrust into starting duties after starter Graham Mertz went down with a torn ACL. The Gators only brought in five players from he transfer portal, so they will be leaning heavily on the returning talent this next season.
It was no secret that the Oklahoma Sooners struggled in their first season in the SEC, finishing 13th in the conference. However, after a successful run in the transfer portal, head coach Brent Venables seems to be on the right track in his new conference, and the Sooners could make some strides in 2025.
The loss of Jaxon Dart will be felt by the Ole Miss Rebels, but something tells us that Lane Kiffin has something up his sleeve, as he always does. Kiffin brought in the No. 2 transfer portal class in the SEC, so the Sip is still a place players want to play, and Ole Miss should be in for another solid season, but maybe not solid enough for a College Football Playoff appearance.
If there is one player that has been talked about the most this offseason in the SEC other than Nico Iamaleava, it would be South Carolina's LaNorris Sellers. Sellers had a stellar freshman season, finishing it on a tear so elite that NFL teams were starting to take notice. Now heading into his second season as the starter, all eyes will be on him, and the pressure to perform will be even higher. However, with Sellers and Dylan Stewart on the other side of the ball, South Carolina is looking pretty scary in the 2025 season.
The first season post-Nick Saban was certainly not what fans wanted, with Kalen DeBoer leading the team to a bowl game and losing to the Michigan Wolverines. However, DeBoer still did his fair share of work in the portal, and even though it may not be Saban-caliber work, the Tide could be up for what some would call a bounce-back season in 2025.
Kirby Smart has made his program one of the most dominant football programs in college football over the last half of the decade. The fact that the Bulldogs are No. 3 on this list probably feels like an insult to him, but with changes coming to the Bulldogs in 2025 and not a lot happening in the transfer portal, they will stay close to the top, but not quite the top spot right now, even after yet another SEC title season.
Brian Kelly somehow managed to pull together the No. 1 overall transfer portal class after the 2024 season, so 2025 could finally be the year the Tigers are able to put it all together under Kelly. A transfer portal class of that caliber is what earns the Tigers the No. 2 spot in these transfer portal power rankings, but like South Carolina, now LSU needs to back up all the talk during the season.
The Texas Longhorns may have lost their starting quarterback, but that doesn't seem to matter when you have Arch Manning waiting in the wings. Manning was able to get some playing time last season due to an injury to Quinn Ewers, which just might have helped his development just enough to be the full-time starter this next season. It is not often said that once a starter leaves, his backup is the upgrade.