The 247Sports Team Talent Composite updated Thursday with top-ranked Georgia and second-ranked Oregon leading the 2026 edition, which uses high school player rankings from 247Sports instead of the industry-generated 247Sports Composite for the first time since the metric’s 2015 debut.
While the Team Talent Composite doesn’t factor in how a player ranked in the transfer portal, college football’s version of free agency is more relevant than ever to how rosters are built.
Here’s a closer look at 12 teams of note and what they did — or didn’t do — in the transfer portal to build their 2026 rosters.
OREGON
The Ducks have methodically climbed up the Team Talent rankings, unseating mainstay Ohio State, which had held one of the top three spots since 2017. The rise has been engineered by a combination of Dan Lanning‘s tenacious appetite for recruiting and access to Phil Knight‘s bountiful resources.
Lanning’s program has finished in the top five of high school recruiting for three straight cycles while its portal philosophy has shifted incrementally each year. The Ducks have begun to focus on adding competitive depth instead of identifying plug-and-play starters as their highly touted high school recruiting classes begin to bear fruit.
NOTRE DAME
Following Brian Kelly‘s departure from the Fighting Irish, Marcus Freeman‘s program has not finished outside the top 12 in the high school recruiting rankings since his arrival in 2022. Built on a culture of fit and player development, it’s easy to see why Notre Dame has inched its way closer to a national championship than it has in recent memory while becoming one of the most consistent contenders in the country.
Despite limited transfer use in past years, Freeman’s team finished with the No. 11-ranked portal haul this offseason, boasting the highest average player ranking of any team in the country. If there’s a recipe for how to build a roster in today’s college football, Notre Dame has it.
