College football's 2026 transfer portal data highlights retention gap across conference tiers

Data on the 2026 transfer cycle reveals the talent gap between the Power Four and Group of Six conferences continues to expand

Chris Hummer

Mar 31, 2026

8:45 am ET

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3 min read

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Despite a pair of Group of Six teams pushing their way into the College Football Playoff last season, data from the 2026 transfer cycle shows the talent gap between the Power Four and the G6 continues to widen.

Of the 114 G6 players who earned first- or second-team all-conference honors last season and returned to college football in 2026, only 29.5% remain with the team they played for in 2025. Of the 81 who transferred, 73 ended up at the Power Four level.

In comparison, 74.6% of Power Four all-conference players who returned in 2026 opted to stay with their previous team.

College football returning production 2026: Returning starters for every FBS team

Cody Nagel

That means a Group of Six all-conference player is more than 2.5 times as likely to transfer as a Power Four all-conference selection.

The difference between the G6 and P4 is even starker when you examine first-team selections. The Group of Six retained only 25.8% of those players, while the Power Four kept 81.8%.

Power Four schools have always had more resources than their Group of Six counterparts, but the contrast between the two levels is increasingly obvious following the 2026 transfer portal cycle.

Most Power Four rosters cost at least $14-16 million, as teams utilize the full House Settlement-allotted revenue share. However, contending rosters, according to sources across the sport, have blown past the $30 million mark, and several teams are expected to approach $40 million in 2026.

Meanwhile, most G6 conferences struggle to field rosters that cost more than a few million dollars. In fact, the American in 2025 set a minimum requiring each school to distribute a cumulative $10 million over a three-year period from 2024-25 and 2027-28. That's just a few million per year, and the American is the richest of the Group of Six leagues.

There are a number of G6 schools that are highly competitive -- think Memphis, South Florida, or even Miami (Ohio) -- but most can't do much when a P4 team comes calling for their best players.

Interestingly, a gap is beginning to emerge in the Power Four ranks, too.

Last year, the Power Four saw only a single first-team all-conference player transfer -- AJ Haulcy from Houston to LSU. This year, that number jumped to four, all of whom came from either the ACC or the Big 12.

Consider the retention comparison between the ACC/Big 12 and the Big Ten/SEC in terms of returning first- or second-team all-conference players:

ACC/Big 12: 56.8%

Big Ten/SEC: 97.4%

That's a significant gap between the two halves of the Power Four, which makes sense considering the TV contracts of those four conferences. The Big Ten and SEC's TV deals dwarf the ACC and Big 12's, giving them greater spending power in the largely unregulated landscape of college football in 2026.

That's evident in the transfer portal, where the SEC and Big Ten -- with the sole exception of Damon Wilson II leaving Missouri for Miami -- did not lose any of their top players in the portal.

The ACC and Big 12 retained just over half of their top players, with 10 of the 16 departures transferring to the Big Ten or SEC.

Zooming out further reveals gaps forming within the conferences themselves.

Total transfers among returning all-conference players

American

18 of 23

78.3%

MAC

18 of 24

75.0%

CUSA

22 of 30

73.3%

Sun Belt

13 of 18

72.2%

Mountain West

10 of 20

50.0%

Big 12

10 of 23

43.4%

ACC

6 of 14

42.9%

SEC

1 of 22

4.5%

Big Ten

0 of 16

0.0%

It's not just the Big Ten and SEC poaching the ACC and Big 12. Poaching is happening within the ACC and Big 12 as big spenders emerge from the pack.

For example, Texas Tech retained all three of its all-conference returnees from the 2025 season. The Red Raiders also poached Cincinnati all-conference quarterback Brendan Sorsby with a more than $5 million NIL offer. The Red Raiders also added Kansas State all-conference linebacker Austin Romaine out of the portal.

It happened in the ACC, too. Miami didn't lose either of its returning all-conference selections. It did, however, poach a pair of all-ACC players from conference champion Duke, spending millions to land quarterback Darian Mensah and wide receiver Cooper Barkate.

While the Big Ten and SEC may spend far more on average than the ACC and Big 12, there are exceptions within the leagues themselves.

Finally, a quick note about the prevalence of transfers in college football: Of the 241 all-conference selections in the G6 this past season, 47.3% were former transfers. On the Power Four level, that number sat at 42%.

Transfers are not just additive pieces on the perimeter of a roster. They make up at least 35% of all-conference p