The college football transfer portal opens on Wednesday for the 10-day spring window, and while it’s generally been a slow time for Tennessee in the past, the Vols figure to be active during the final chance to bolster their roster for the 2025 season. The Vols haven’t added any players after spring practice in each of the previous two years, choosing instead to add their portal help in January so those players had a full offseason to assimilate to the program’s culture, learn Tennessee’s schemes and get the adjustment period out of the way. All indications are that will change in 2025, though, and after its messy public split with returning starter Nico Iamaleava over the weekend, Tennessee will be shopping for a transfer quarterback for the first time since the opening months of the Josh Heupel Era in 2021.
Tennessee’s approach under Heupel, in the past three years in particular, has prioritized traditional high school recruiting and player retention as the primary method of roster- and program-building, but some positions have clear needs going into his fifth season on Rocky Top this fall. The Vols brought in eight transfers – again, all in the winter window – in both 2023 and 2024 and added just four portal players earlier this offseason. Tennessee’s last post-spring additions were in 2022, when the program was still coming out of self-imposed scholarship reductions due to the ongoing NCAA case against Jeremy Pruitt and his staff.
The spring windows generally have been lower on quality and quantity. It’s a slower burn with some programs still finishing up spring ball, and for SEC teams there can be no movement within the conference thanks to the league’s transfer deadline date. The Vols have been selective in the portal throughout Heupel’s tenure, but with the head coach saying on Saturday amid the fallout of the Iamaleava saga that Tennessee is “ready to go win this fall,” could the staff be more aggressive?
How active Tennessee ultimately is depends on who is available (and who is available at the right NIL price) and how any potential departures might impact the roster, but with the Vols likely looking to add to their roster, here’s a position-by-position evaluation of their transfer portal needs for the spring window.
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