Major college football program loses four running backs to the transfer portal

One college football powerhouse will have to completely rebuild a key position group after mass departure for transfer portal

Georgia's college football players tackling a running back | Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

The transfer portal doesn't officially open up for business both ways until early January. Of course, that hasn't stopped the bulk of college football players from announcing their intentions early. For one top program, the losses are already mounting and particularly within the running back room.

On Friday morning the day after Christmas, trusted college football insider and one of On3's transfer portal gurus, Pete Nakos, reported that Texas running back Quintrevion Wisner now plans to enter the portal and investigate new homes outside of Austin. Except, Wisner's decision is a bit strange given the Texas RB situation.

Wisner is the FOURTH Texas running back to announce his plans to go portaling following the Longhorns successful but disappointing 9-3 campaign on the heels of their preseason No. 2 ranking. He joins fellow RBs CJ Baxter, Jerrick Gibson and Rickey Stewart in his desire to leave Texas. With Wisner too, that group includes Texas' three leading rushers not named Arch Manning, making rising sophomore Christian Clark and his 131 yards the best returning option for Steve Sarkisian in the backfield.

Quintrevion "Tre" Wisner, in particular, was the team's top rusher, though he only accounted for 597 total rushing yards through just nine game appearances. Meanwhile, CJ Baxter has been a consistent name in the Texas RB room but racked up just under 200 rushing yards in eight games played for him this season.

Texas Longhorns running back CJ Baxter (4) | Matthew Hinton-Imagn Images

Bottom Line: Texas needed revamp at running back

Let's call a spade a spade here: Texas was not good enough on the offensive side of the football in 2025. They won nine games and barely finished top 50 in points per contest. Sure, Arch Manning and his failure to totally live up to immense expectations sticks out as a main reason, but the bigger one might be the underdevelopment of the skill talent.

Texas didn't have a running back rush for 600+ yards on the year and now four of them are transferring away. Clearly, that room wasn't a strength. But neither was wide receiver, where Texas banked on returning youngsters to take the leap. Ryan Wingo and DeAndre Moore combined for 1,302 yards on the year and both did improve, but Texas lacked that ultimate playmaker on that side of the ball. The QB didn't meet Heisman expectations and the WR and RB position groups simply failed to produce a top-end talent while the offensive line was new and inconsistent.

If put under a lie detector test, Steve Sarkisian may even admit that some departures needed to happen on offense in order to field a stronger unit around Arch Manning, who's poised for some sort of jump after an uneven first season as the Texas starter.