Happy New Year from the Chant here on Warchant TV. He's Irish Ophel Managing Editor of Warchant.com. My name is Tom Lang.

And today we're getting you up to date on the portal happenings, front office hirings, coaching news, all that stuff that has happened in the last 24 hours or so as it relates to Florida State football.

And we'll start with a big piece of news that Ira and I discussed when this player intended to enter the transfer portal.

It's safety Ashland Barker who reportedly now is going to be returning to Florida State for 2026.

Ira, I was hurting on this one when he said he was leaving.

This is a good player, physical player.

I think he plays under control as well at a position of need for

florida state at safety uh you were part of the reporting earlier today he's back listed officially

as a florida state seminal so uh tell me what you know and and what do you think about

florida state getting ashland barker back as well nice little run for florida state for

retention the last day or two yeah i mean i mean, I think it's, it is huge. I didn't know if it was as quite a big of loss as you did. I mean, you were, I think you were leading the charge that this was a big one. And I thought it was significant. I felt like you could probably replace him. But, you know, man, it's it, it is important to keep players if you can.

I mean, that's the reality of it is. Ashland Barker has been through all of the tour of duty

workouts. He's been through wins and losses. He's been in that locker room. He knows all these guys.

And so now when you have a kind of a nucleus of guys who talked about leaving, some of them either are considered leaving, you know, some of them like Deuce Robinson never said he was going to go in the portal or declare for the draft, but he was clearly weighing his options. We got him coming back, Jabro Rawls who said he was going to go on the portal. He comes back. Landon Thomas. He says he's going to go to the portal. He comes back.

Ashland Barker's another nice one. And it's a cluster at that position. You know, again,

you know, probably four or five days ago, I was working on a story about the defensive backroom and how they were going to have to rebuild that through the transfer portal. And it looked

all oblique with losing Gibral Ross because you already lost Jerry Wilson

in the starting corner.

Edwin Joseph is starting nickel had already gone in the portal.

Now you're losing two more starters and Earl Little declared to the draft.

And all of a sudden it looks like that entire safety or that entire secondary is going to be

rebuilt in 2025.

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