Ranking Top SEC Transfer Portal Players for 2026: Cooper Petagna of CBS Sports Interview

That SEC Football Podcast

Michael Bratton/SEC Mike

Sports, News, Football, Games, Leisure, Sports News

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cooper Petagna of CBS Sports joins That SEC Podcast to discuss his rankings of the top transfer portal players signed by the SEC this offseason! ranking top transfer portal players (0:30), No. 1 Sam Leavitt LSU QB (3:45), No. 4 Jordan Seaton LSU LT (5:40), No. 5 Princewill Umanmielen LSU EDGE (7:20), No. 6 Cam Coleman Texas WR (9:30), No. 7 Chaz Coleman Tennessee EDGE (11:15), No. 22 Deuce Knight Ole Miss QB (13:00), No. 24 Byrum Brown Auburn QB (15:00), No. 28 Darrell Gill Jr. Ole Miss WR (17:00), No. 29-30 Terrance Green & Devan Thompkins Alabama DL (18:40), No. 31 Isiah Canion Georgia WR (21:00), No. 38 Hollywood Smothers Texas RB (22:30), No. 42 Jacarrius Peak South Carolina LT (25:00), No. 43 Xavier Gilliam Tennessee DL (26:50), No. 49 Austin Simmons Missouri QB (28:30), No. 76 Trell Harris Oklahoma WR (30:45), No. 80 Kenny Minchey Kentucky QB (32:00), No. 93 Anto Saka Texas A&M EDGE (34:15), SEC lacking elite defensive linemen? (35:45) Link to Cooper's Top 100 Transfer Portal Rankings for CBS Sports: https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/college-footballs-top-100-transfer-portal-players-for-2026/ Advertising inquiries: thatsecpodcast@gmail.com Interested in helping us grow the channel? Become an Official Cousin by signing up for a membership to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8aQL-yFS2ZoSkUBeMfYesA/join We have t-shirts for sale! Check out our merchandise store featuring shirts, hoodies, stickers, coffee mugs, pillows, phone cases and more: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/thatsecpodcast?ref_id=19055 All show music comes via Nashville band Crimson Calamity; check out their work by clicking the link below: https://open.spotify.com/artist/29HGeJEcYHBJlyt4xIcLBw?si=GJoEOr0YSoeqWkrjhCc0Ug

Transcript

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0:00.0	First time on the show, please to be joined by Cooper Patania.
0:13.6	I hope I said that right.
0:14.8	I always screw up names.
0:16.8	Patagna.
0:18.7	Patagna.
0:19.5	Okay, there you go.
0:20.4	See, first edit right there. But Cooper, thank you so much for joining the show. Really appreciate it. Thank you, man. Yeah, no, it's an honor to be on, ready to talk some SEC football with you. Yeah, so for CBS, you recently did a very interesting article. I tweeted it out. out. i'll put a link in the show notes too so
0:38.7	people can follow along or maybe they just want to check it out after listening to this but you
0:43.7	rank the top 100 transfer portal players in 2026 that's right man yeah and um a very uh vast list to choose from if you've been following the college football transfer portal.
0:58.0	I think we're at about 2,500 players that we've graded at this point, which is insane.
1:06.1	You know, so you think about the two-week window and obviously all the players declaring their intentions and everything
1:11.5	that goes into it. So typically, you know, with my previous job working in player personnel in college,
1:16.6	you have about two to three years to evaluate high school players. The NFL, they have about a one-year
1:22.1	window. We got about two months to watch a couple thousand guys. So yeah, man, it's been a lot of fun.
1:28.4	So just, you know, you don't have to go through your whole spiel here, but how do you, you know, rank these players? Because, you know, everybody's going to complain. You don't got my guy high enough. You got this guy too high, too low. How do you, what is your criteria? Yeah, that's a great question.
1:44.4	Our criteria is a little bit different than how we rank high school players, which, you know,
1:50.1	we get a lot of questions about this just in terms of the rankings process and why we
1:53.5	do it the way that we do.
1:54.5	But, you know, on the high school side, it's a strict projection to the potential of where
1:59.6	we think these guys will get drafted in the NFL.
2:02.0	And what we found is that's the best barometer just in terms of judging talent long term.
2:07.2	And for the transfer portal, you know, it's been a little bit of a, you're just kind of learning as
	...

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