UCLA Football Scout Team QB Chase Artopoeus Enters Transfer Portal
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The Bruins are losing a steady presence from their quarterback room.
UCLA football quarterback Chase Artopoeus is entering the NCAA transfer portal, he announced Tuesday on Twitter. Artopoeus just finished his fourth season with the Bruins, and while the walk-on did not appear in a game until this fall, he did spend the majority of his career as the top scout team quarterback.
Artopoeus, who will lock up his undergraduate degree in December, has two years of eligibility remaining. Artopoeus is the third Bruin to enter the transfer portal this year, with offensive linemen Tyler Manoa and Baraka Beckett doing so in early October.
"In one week time, I will have officially graduated from the top public university in the nation as well as completed my fourth season at UCLA," Artopoeus wrote in his announcement. "With that being said, after talking with family, mentors and of course Coach Gundy and Coach Kelly, it is in my best interest to explore external opportunities to further my football career. Thank you to all my coaches and teammates over the last four seasons for helping to develop me into the player I am today and I am very excited to be able to compete and win games in my future home."
Less than 15 minutes after he publicly announced he would be entering the portal, Artopoeus tweeted out that he had received an offer from East Tennessee State.
Artopoeus was a two-star prospect coming out of Saint Joseph High School (CA) in 2019, according to 247Sports, where he was named league MVP his senior year. The local product also spent two years at Righetti High School (CA) and one at Thousand Oaks High School (CA).
Brown and Columbia were the other schools who offered Artopoeus coming out of high school, while Bucknell, Cornell, Hawaii, Holy Cross, Montana, North Dakota State, Northern Arizona, UPenn, Sacred Heart, San Jose State, UTEP and Yale also recruited him.
Across four seasons in Westwood, Artopoeus never recorded an in-game stat, but he did participate in the Bruins' games against Alabama State, Colorado and Arizona.
Artopoeus won UCLA's Nick "Pac" Pasquale Memorial Award for Scout Team Offensive Player of the Year in 2021, though, and he also earned a spot on the 2021-22 Fall Pac-12 Honor Roll that same season. Artopoeus has also made the Athletic Director's Honor Roll seven times in nine quarters.
The Bruins lost two quarterbacks to the portal in the 2022 offseason, with Kajiya Hollawayne transferring to Grambling State and Parker McQuarrie transferring to Independence Community College. With Artopoeus transferring and five-year starter Dorian Thompson-Robinson exhausting his eligibility, UCLA will lose two more this offseason.
Ethan Garbers – the former Washington transfer who spent the past two years as Thompson-Robinson's backup – is positioned to take over as the starter. After redshirting his freshman year, former four-star recruit Justyn Martin could compete for that job as well, while Chase Griffin will be in his fifth year as a Bruin.
Three-star Miramonte (CA) quarterback Luke Duncan will join the depth chart as well if he signs with UCLA in the coming weeks, leaving the team with four players at the position.
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