College Football HQ

All-conference edge enters college football transfer portal after coaching change

The standout pass rusher is looking for his fourth collegiate home.
Joe Cox|
Charles Huff has departed from Southern Miss and so has one of his top defenders.
Charles Huff has departed from Southern Miss and so has one of his top defenders. | Matt Bush/Special to the Clarion Ledger / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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The coaching shuffle and transfer portal are often closely related. Whether it's players on the move to follow departing coaches or heading out because they don't fit under a new coach, the constant shift in FBS coaches plays a genuine role in the constant shift of players.

After a single season at Southern Miss, coach Charles Huff moved on to take the head coaching role at Memphis. Of course, Huff is going to Memphis to replace Ryan Silverfield, who headed to Arkansas to replace Sam Pittman. But with Huff's departure, Southern Miss is now set to lose an All-Sun Belt edge rusher.

Southern Miss edge J'Mond Tapp has indicated his intention to hit the transfer portal fresh off his All-Sun Belt honors. Tapp has already had an extensive portal history. Tapp was a four-star recruit out of high school in Louisiana. He began his career at Texas, where he spent two seasons. Despite his impressive potential, Tapp played in just nine games over two seasons as a reserve and kept his redshirt in 2022.

Tapp then transferred and ended up at Arizona State for 2024, where he didn't see any action that season. He then transferred to Southern Miss for 2025, where his career took a significant step up. He had 70 tackles in 2025, including 12 tackles for loss and 7.5 sacks, fourth overall in the Sun Belt.

While Tapp will have just one remaining season of eligibility, he is a significant portal recruit. On3 has him included in the overall top 50 players in both its own internal rankings and the On3 Industry rankings. The now 275-pound edge rusher figures to see significant interest.

Given his Louisiana upbringing and another of the recent coaching shifts, it may not be surprising that a couple of 247sports insiders have already logged picks for Tapp with Lane Kiffin's LSU Tigers. Kiffin had landed one of the top portal classes in the nation over the past several seasons with Ole Miss and now figures to be up to potentially an even higher standard backed by massive LSU funding.

While there is always the possibility that Tapp would be interested in following Coach Huff to Memphis, it seems more plausible that a player with three seasons of power-conference experience will use his last transfer to get back to a major national power. Of course, Texas Tech has been a significant transfer portal players as well and figures to be retooling its dominant defense, so the Red Raiders could be another geographically relevant option for Tapp.

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Joe Cox
JOE COX

Joe is a journalist and writer who covers college and professional sports. He has written or co-written over a dozen sports books, including several regional best sellers. His last book, A Fine Team Man, is about Jackie Robinson and the lives he changed. Joe has been a guest on MLB Network, the Paul Finebaum show and numerous other television and radio shows. He has been inside MLB dugouts, covered bowl games and conference tournaments with Saturday Down South and still loves telling the stories of sports past and present.

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