Penn State University is playing its first game in the College Football Playoff in just a few days and is facing a shakeup in the quarterback room thanks to the sport’s wide-open transfer rules.
Sophomore QB Beau Pribula, the backup to starter Drew Allar, announced Sunday night that he’s entering the transfer portal and plans to leave the school he grew up rooting for, even though the Nittany Lions are in the hunt for a national championship. Stuck behind Allar, who is one of the most productive quarterbacks in school history, Pribula wanted a chance to play elsewhere.
Unfortunately for Pribula, he did not have time to make that decision. Unlike in professional sports – in which there are set start dates for free agency – the transfer portal windows allow for fluid athlete movement in college sports and a massive amount of shuffling takes place during the break in semesters of the academic calendar. That scramble just so happened to overlap with Penn State’s College Football Playoff push and forced Pribula to make a life-changing choice at a key time of year.
“The current NCAA post-season model creates a challenge for student-athletes,” Pribula wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The overlapping CFB playoff and transfer portal timeline has forced me into an impossible decision. After speaking at length with my family and coaches, it is with a heavy heart that I announce my intentions to enter the transfer portal and depart from the team to explore opportunities elsewhere.”
It was a tough decision for Pribula, who grew up in Pennsylvania and said it was a dream of his to play football in Happy Valley.
Head coach James Franklin told reporters on Monday that the situation is simply unfair to both the team and Pribula.
“I can give you my word: Beau Pribula did not want to leave our program and he did not want to leave our program until the end of the season,” Franklin said. “But, the way the portal is and the timing of it and the way our team is playing – and when you play the position of quarterback, those spots are filling up – he felt like he was put in a no-win situation. And I agree with him.”
Franklin said the way the sport is set up right now – with the most successful teams preparing for bowl games in December and the teams stuck at home trying to rebuild by recruiting transfers – is not in the best interest of student-athletes.
The longtime Penn State coach said the sport may need to explore having a commissioner or someone who is outside of the conference system to make decisions about what is actually in the best interests of student-athletes.
“There’s just a lot of things that don’t really make sense,” Franklin said of the current state of the game.
“I’m concerned for college football right now in general to be honest with you, and I think a lot of people are,” he added.
Pribula’s former teammates, who spoke to the press Monday, wished the sophomore well and expressed confidence that he would be a success no matter where he went.
Allar shrugged off the idea of potential negative effects on the team during preparation for Saturday’s game against Southern Methodist University, saying there’s not much that can be done to change the situation.
“It’s unfortunate just that it has to be this way because, obviously, I know he didn’t really necessarily want it to be this way,” Allar said. “And unfortunately, that’s the landscape of college football right now – there’s not much I can do about it, just really abide by the rules that they put in place, and it is what it is unfortunately.
“But again, he’s going to kill it wherever he goes and he’s going to have a really, really good year wherever he goes.”
