Did Lane Kiffin's transfer portal approach work? Unpacking Ole Miss football's spring results
OXFORD ― Ole Miss football's spring transfer portal window started in a panic.
April 16 began a 15-day period permitting players to enter their names in the transfer portal following spring practice. That morning, members of the national media reported that Key Lawrence, an important offseason addition to the Rebels' secondary from Oklahoma, would be testing the portal for the second time in less than six months.
It looked like an early manifestation of the chaos coach Lane Kiffin feared. He'd expressed concern about players transferring from one school to another in the winter, accepting NIL payment from that school, and then moving on to a different school in the spring for more cash – a new dynamic made possible by a federal injunction negating the NCAA's power to force multi-time transfers to sit out a year.
But, it turned out, the reports about Lawrence – whose full first name is Keshawn – were erroneous. The name in the portal was Keyshawn Lawrence, a walk-on linebacker from Starkville.
With the benefit of hindsight, the Lawrence incident looks emblematic of the spring portal period as a collective: Widespread panic followed by, well, not much action.
Those transfer portal repeat customers who worried Kiffin ‒ and many of his peers ‒ turned out to be a relative non-issue. In 247Sports' list of the top 300 transfers this offseason, three have taken that path. Offensive lineman Kadyn Proctor moved from Alabama to Iowa and back to Alabama. Running back Peny Boone left Toledo for Louisville before bouncing to UCF. And defensive end Tyler Baron – once an Ole Miss commit – departed Tennessee, enrolled at Louisville and entered the portal once more. He's still deciding on his next landing spot.
The Rebels did suffer one defection from their initial winter portal class. Corner Amorion Walker, who looked likely to serve as a backup in 2024, opted to return to Michigan – the program he left this winter. Ole Miss added experienced Houston corner Isaiah Hamilton to replace him.
HAMILTON: Ole Miss football, Lane Kiffin land Isaiah Hamilton, Houston transfer cornerback
"I think we're really good," Kiffin said on April 13, when asked how he felt about keeping his winter transfer class together. "But you gotta stay on all of it ... Players may be really happy, maybe everything's going great. They got a relative or something and they get pre-portaled and someone says, 'Come here ... and you'll make more money.' You gotta be ready for it."
It appears the Rebels were. And they should have been, given they designed their spring itinerary with roster retention at the forefront. Ole Miss did not make a hot dog eating contest the centerpiece of its "spring game" because of an affinity for packaged meats. The Rebels set out to play as little football as possible so as not to advertize their depth chart on national television with the portal opening days later.
The most notable departure looks like Kedrick Reescano, a Class of 2023 four-star running back. That's an understandable one. In need of veteran contributors at the tailback position for 2024, the Rebels landed two of them in New Mexico's Jacory Croskey-Merritt and Miami's Henry Parrish, who returns to Oxford, where he started his career.
With further additions still likely, the spring portal period looks like an Ole Miss win ‒ with a scare at the start, just for fun.
David Eckert covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Lane Kiffin: Ole Miss transfer portal approach in spring explained
