Syracuse, Tennessee and starting quarterbacks for Labor Day weekend

One of the more unique things about the transfer portal/NIL era in college sports is that we now have more high profile quarterback competitions than ever before. Previously, most programs had pretty clear lines of succession once a quarterback graduated or went pro, with an underclassman or transfer who had sat out a year lined up and ready to go.

In this new era, quarterbacks transfers are higher profile and higher value monetarily than almost any position, and thus, more schools come into fall camp with a new face taking snaps. This was true of both Syracuse and Tennessee, who will face off in the AFLAC Kickoff Game Labor Day Weekend.

Syracuse graduated former Ohio State transfer Kyle McCord after a record setting season and brought in Rickie Collins from LSU for Spring camp. However, when returning captain wide receiver Trebor Pena transferred to Penn State and cited NIL and poor quarterback play as reasons for the move, Orange head coach Fran Brown did follow up his defense of Collins with adding Steve Angeli to the roster in the Spring transfer portal window.

Tennessee was just as messy and far more public with their quarterback transfer problems; Nico Iamaleava’s freshman season wasn’t perfect, but he was expected to be a big star in his second year. However, a protracted month long saga saw the QB frozen out of Tennessee facilities after a reported NIL dispute and the sophomore transferred to UCLA, a move that he says was about family and not NIL. Either way, the Volunteers brought in Joey Aguilar, who was previously committed to UCLA before Iamaleava’s move.

That’s a lot of backstory to say: neither team was settled coming into fall, but within the last week both Aguilar and Angeli1 were named respective starters for Tennessee and Syracuse. Based on how we have seen transfer portal moves work in the past, it should not be surprising that quarterbacks brought in during the Spring window are the starters for Week 1 the following fall. However, what can we now expect from Tennessee’s offense with Aguilar compared to Nico? What about Angeli compared to McCord?

Let’s dive in.