Adam Burke shares his weekly college football power ratings
The transfer portal is really buzzing this bowl season. We haven’t seen a whole lot of opt-outs yet, but this should be the week that those start taking place. I was hesitant to put out updated power ratings knowing that a lot of draft-worthy prospects will be removing themselves from the roster. Those are the types of players that are really going to move lines. Some of them may be partially baked into the number already, but the sticker shock and adjustments will further move the number.
But, we do know that there are a lot of guys in the portal that are impactful, especially with the Group of Five teams. As Brett McMurphy reported, 26 of the 39 non-CFP bowl games have already seen the loss of a head coach, offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator, or the starting QB. More are coming. That does make it hard to invest in a lot of these games, but we can make some assumptions at this stage.
The transfer portal has more uncertainty to it because NIL bags are available in every program. It’s all a matter of whether or not the money gets used to keep guys around or go shopping in the NCAAF Store. So, that means opt-outs and a lot of them are obvious considerations, like Jayden Daniels, Malik Nabers, Marvin Harrison Jr., Drake Maye, Olu Fashanu, Joe Alt, Brock Bowers, Laiatu Latu, Jared Verse, Keon Coleman, and other players that are on the defensive side of the ball.
I made adjustments for this week based on what we know. I didn’t make any speculative adjustments. I simply used our opt-out and transfer portal tracker here at VSiN to subtract from teams’ power ratings that have either significant losses or are collectively looking at losses at position groups or units.
Here are my Bowl Game College Football Power Ratings:
