How Iowa football’s roster retention has fueled success in transfer portal era

IOWA CITY — Jaden Harrell has needed to be patient in his first four years with Iowa football.

The linebacker did not see any game action in his first two seasons. He appeared on special teams in every game during his third season, but he only had 22 defensive snaps, per Pro Football Focus. Even in 2024, he had only 97 defensive snaps.

But ask the former three-star recruit whether he considered entering the transfer portal at any point, he does not hesitate to reject the notion.

“To me, that’s a scary place,” Harrell said in the spring ahead of his senior season. “You’re not guaranteed a home. ... And I don’t want to leave this place and leave that to chance. I love it here.”

Harrell’s loyalty and patience with the Hawkeyes may seem like an outlier nationally as transfer portal activity continues to grow each year. (NCAA-released data shows 2,902 FBS players transferred via the portal between Aug. 1, 2023, and July 31, 2024.)

The Urbandale native’s situation is not as much of an outlier on Evashevski Drive, however, as the Hawkeyes have done a better job than many of their peers at retaining their roster in the portal era.

Iowa has averaged 11 portal departures per offseason from 2022-25, according to a Gazette analysis of figures from the recruiting site On3’s database. That’s the fewest during that span among the 18 current Big Ten members, followed by Northwestern (11.5), Penn State (15) and Ohio State (17.8).

On3’s transfer portal database often does not show walk-ons, and there are inherent difficulties with tracking a portal that is not publicly visible. But even with a generous margin for error, the Hawkeyes are well above average in the conference in retaining their own players.

The overall conference average is 20.4 departures per year, based on the On3 data, including the West Coast teams that were part of the Pac-12 for part of the time span. If only counting teams while they were in the Big Ten, the average is 20.6.

“Hopefully we’ve got an environment that’s healthy, and the other part is you have to get the right guys in that environment,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz told The Gazette ahead of a Polk County I-Club meeting. “And I think our staff has done a really good job of identifying guys that will fit in our program and be able to thrive and grow and flourish hopefully.”

Assistant head coach and linebackers coach Seth Wallace values athletes who are “process-oriented.”

“They understand that Christmas comes once a year, and it doesn’t come every single day,” Wallace said.

For Wallace, whose recruiting territory contains the talent-rich Chicago area, it’s “something that you certainly evaluate” when recruiting players.

“A lot of three and four-sport athletes — they come with that because, in one of their sports, they’ve had to endure this process of waiting your time, sitting behind somebody else, having to work your ass off in order to get something good out of it,” Wallace said.

It’s part of the Hawkeyes’ holistic focus on “evaluating, recruiting, retaining and then developing.”

“If you just stick to doing the evaluation right, whether it comes with a portal kid or with a high school kid, and then you retain them from Year 1 to Year 2, Year 2 to Year 3,” Wallace said, “and they’re developing during the course of that, then you get a real good chance at not having to go to the portal.”

  Buy Photo

Other factors helping Hawkeyes retain talent

Iowa’s coaching stability has undoubtedly been a key factor in the Hawkeyes’ ability to retain their roster as well. Eleven of the current 18 Big Ten programs have changed head coaches since 2021. Kirk Ferentz, on the other hand, has been at the helm in Iowa City for the last 26 seasons.

Iowa’s Swarm Collective also has been competitive enough in football to be a factor in retaining players. The collective’s founder, Brad Heinrichs, said on The Gazette’s Hawk Off the Press podcast in February the membership was “still in the 3,000 range,” but with a “good group of strong donors.”

“The people that we do have leave, a lot of times, I would consider to be cleansing the program as opposed to having a defection that hurts,” Heinrichs said on the podcast. “We’ve been very successful in helping to retain players, and that’s all due in part because of the donations of Hawkeye fans and local businesses that have supported us.”

Swarm’s success includes paying athletes the amount that had been promised to them, assuming they fulfill the contractual requirements. (Swarm has stipulations in the contract that ensure an athlete cannot transfer elsewhere and still receive funds from Iowa’s collective.)

“We have honored all of our contracts and paid in full, as we should, whereas other collectives across the country that I know about have not,” Heinrichs said.

Winning formula for Iowa

Iowa’s emphasis on developing and retaining talent has been a winning formula in the portal era. The Hawkeyes have gone 18-9 in conference games since 2022, and that includes the Big Ten West title-winning 2023 season.

Of the 14 incumbent Big Ten members, only Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State have enjoyed better conference records during that span than Ferentz’s Hawkeyes.

“You’ve seen across the country when you are solely building a roster with the transfer portal, it’s a quick fix,” Wallace said. “And it typically isn’t lasting. And we’re fortunate because we have done an unbelievable job of retaining our players.”

As Harrell awaited his opportunity for the last four seasons, he saw Jay Higgins wait three seasons before tying a 51-year-old program record in 2023 and becoming a unanimous All-American in 2024.

“We got a bunch of believers like that on our team because they’ve seen a bunch of those type of stories,” Wallace said. “With the exception of a couple, most of our guys just keep their nose down and their eyes down, just keep going, instead of raising their hand saying, ‘I want to go somewhere else.’”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

Sign up for our curated Iowa Hawkeyes athletics newsletter at thegazette.com/hawks.