Cooper Petagna sat down Tuesday and did something portal analysts rarely get to do this late in June. He rewrote the board.
Texas Tech parted ways with Brendan Sorsby, the quarterback who had been sitting at No. 2 in the 2026 transfer portal rankings since the spring. One court fight, one NFL decision later, and the guy who spent months as the most talked about name in college football isn't in the conversation anymore. KTVB
Sorsby is declaring for the NFL's Supplemental Draft, so the rankings now reflect him as gone for good. No more injunctions. No more conference calls about boycotts. He's out of college football, full stop. KTVB
Somebody had to move up.
That somebody is Jordan Seaton, the LSU offensive tackle who jumped to No. 3 in the portal rankings the moment Sorsby's name came off the board. KTVB
Here's why that one promotion matters more than it looks.
LSU now has the No. 1 overall transfer in Sam Leavitt and the new No. 3 in Seaton, making the Tigers just the second program in transfer portal history to land two top three transfers in the same cycle. The only other team to ever pull that off was the program Seaton left behind. KTVB
Sit with that for a second. Colorado did it once. Now LSU has done it too, and Lane Kiffin didn't even have to win a recruiting battle to get there. He just had to wait for a quarterback in Lubbock to lose a court case.
This is what building a roster through the portal looks like when you do it right and get lucky at the same time.
Seaton wasn't some afterthought addition. He was named All Big 12 second team last season after allowing only one sack and five pressures across 511 snaps before a foot injury ended his year early. 247Sports had him as the No. 4 overall transfer prospect in the country and the top offensive tackle in the portal, period. He was always going to be a foundational piece. He just wasn't supposed to be this close to the top of the board. CBS SportsCBS Sports
Kiffin's pitch for why LSU keeps winning these battles hasn't changed since December. He said he doesn't do well with no, and that the answer just makes him more competitive when he hears it. Apparently the same logic works even when he isn't actively recruiting anybody. The board moves, and LSU is sitting right there waiting for it. CBS Sports
Seaton now joins a Tigers offensive line that also includes Ole Miss transfer Devin Harper, protecting an offense that's bringing in four blue chip receivers around Leavitt. The line in front of the country's top transfer quarterback just got more important, and now it's also more decorated. CBS Sports
Texas Tech, meanwhile, is left explaining how a season that started with a top two portal quarterback ends with him gone before he ever played a snap for them. There's no version of that story that sounds good in Lubbock.
If you want to see exactly how the board shifted and who else moved up behind Seaton, the full breakdown is on our portal rankings page. Worth a look before fall camp, because this is the second time this offseason the rankings have been rewritten by something that happened off the field entirely.
Nobody saw this version of the offseason coming in January. By August, it might be the only version anybody remembers.