The research for this post began because I was curious about which programs have the most junior college transfers and also I wanted to know what the JUCO numbers look like in each of the 5 power conferences. It then expanded to to include a few more topics on maintaining roster health in college football.
If you're an Irish fan I'm sure you are aware that Notre Dame doesn't have any JUCO players on the football team and hasn't for many years. The reason is that anyone who is forced to go the JUCO route out of high school will be so far behind the junior-level course work at Notre Dame that it's virtually impossible to graduate over their final two years on campus. This also assumes an athlete will still want to stick with the Fighting Irish after 2 years anyway. In short, it's just not worth the coaching staff's time and the subsequent admissions headaches.
But other schools admit junior college transfers. Some use them to plug roster holes from time to time while others use the JUCO ranks as a first-stop in recruiting.
Here's a look at the total number of junior college transfers in each of the major football conferences:
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