Well-Traveled Tate Martell, One-Time UW Commit, Bound for UNLV

Counting verbals, the quarterback is now on his fifth college football program.

Next stop for Tate Martell — the poster child for the college football transfer portal and the prenatal scholarship offer — is UNLV.

You remember Martell, don't you?

From youth football?

On July 25, 2012, the aspiring quarterback from San Diego was just 14 and a precocious eighth-grader when he accepted a University of Washington scholarship offer, pulling instant nationwide headlines.

From then coach Steve Sarkisian.

While Husky Stadium was being remodeled.

When the kid was a big fan of Jake Locker. 

Martell and the UW, however, went their separate ways 18 months later when Sarkisian left for USC and Chris Petersen took over as coach.

Martell and his family moved to Las Vegas and he attended Gorman Bishop High School while appearing on the reality TV show "QB1: Beyond the Lines." A 4-star recruit, he passed for 7,507 yards and 113 touchdowns, and ran for 2,294 yards and 35 scores.

After committing orally to Texas A&M as a much older teenager, the 5-foot-11, 205-pound Martell had a change of heart and switched his commitment to Ohio State. He appeared in six games for the Buckeyes in 2018 as a redshirt freshman coming off the bench, completing 23 of 28 passes for 269 yards and a score.

Then it was on to the University of Miami, where he appeared in seven games in reserve and completed just one pass for a 7-yard gain in the 2019 Independence Bowl, a 14-0 defeat to Louisiana Tech. 

After opting out of the recent pandemic season, he's a junior with two seasons of eligibility remaining.

Martell has come full circle in returning to the state of Nevada. He's no longer an all-everything quarterback, having never started a college game. He might even end up playing another position. 

He's been bouncing around as much as Sarkisian, who's been to USC, Atlanta Falcons, Alabama and Texas since offering that scholarship.

Martell, the one-time, junior-high quarterback with the Husky offer, is a 23-year-old man now, still looking for a team to call his own.

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