UCLA Football, Ole Miss Enter Viral Battle for 'Transfer U' Title
On Monday afternoon, the official UCLA football social media accounts sent out a graphic that got the fanbase buzzing.
The team had labeled itself as "Transfer U," citing a statistic that it had brought in more starters via the transfer portal since 2020 than any other program. According to the graphic – which featured an edited photo of Gabriel Murphy, Grayson Murphy, Azizi Hearn, Darius Muasau and Laiatu Latu during the Bruins' most recent game at the Rose Bowl – the team had placed 20 transfers into starting roles just over the past three seasons.
The graphic made its point very clear. After all, the Murphy twins came from North Texas, Hearn came from Wyoming, Muasau came from Hawaii and Latu came from Washington, all this offseason alone. Star running back Zach Charbonnet transferred in from Michigan, defensive lineman Gary Smith III and receiver Jake Bobo came from Duke, left tackle Raiqwon O'Neal came from Rutgers and defensive lineman Jacob Sykes came from Harvard.
A few years back, running back Brittain Brown came from Duke, defensive back Qwuantrezz Knight came from Kent State, cornerback Obi Eboh came from Stanford and left guard Paul Grattan Jr. came from Villanova. The list goes on and on.
Fans disagreed about the merits of the trend, with some championing their program as a haven for veteran talent, while others took it as a chance to point out coach Chip Kelly's lack of traditional recruiting success with high school prospects.
As it turned out, Kelly was not a fan of the graphic either.
"When I saw it, I said, ‘That’s a mistake,’" Kelly responded when asked if he had signed off on the posts going out.
Kelly emphasized a point he had tried to make during fall camp – that transfer recruiting was simply a piece of the greater puzzle and not the full picture when it came to team building.
"We’re always going to build it just like we talked about in the preseason, with the high school kids and then you’re going to supplement it with the portal," Kelly said. "We’ve been very efficient with our portal. I think the kids we bring in here play and that’s a credit to how we do that. We’ve always approached it like it’s free agency in the National Football League, so how can they contribute to the program?"
UCLA has sent out just 56 offers to class of 2023 recruits, fewer than any other Power Five program. Their six commits put them towards the bottom of that list as well, and their incoming recruiting class is ranked No. 85 in the country, according to the 247Sports Composite.
Since Kelly arrived in Westwood, his recruiting classes have ranked No. 42 on average. Compare that to the No. 16 average ranking the program had from 2014 to 2017, and it becomes clear Kelly has brought in far less hyped-up high school talent than his predecessor, Jim Mora.
As much as he avoided diving head-first into it, Kelly has leaned more heavily on the portal than almost any other program in the country over the past few seasons.
Emphasis on the "almost."
A few hours after Kelly distanced himself from the graphic his team sent out on social media, Ole Miss fired back with an identical one of their own. According to the Rebels, though, they had turned 21 transfers into starters since 2020, rather than the 16 the Bruins had pegged them for.
The graphic was made with the exact same format and exact same wording as the original from earlier in the week, and it only listed UCLA below Ole Miss on the leaderboard to make the trolling even more clear. Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, who used to be the head coach at USC, countered Kelly by quote tweeting the graphic with his direct support, just a few days after he wore a hoodie to a press conference that read "TRANSFER TO THE SIP."
Kelly said Wednesday that he did not see a point in deleting the tweet, since the image was already out there. Regardless, it was deleted Wednesday night.
It was not scrubbed off the internet entirely, however, and it was up for just long enough to spark plenty of criticism and debate.
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