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Following the 2024 college football season, most fans expected quarterback Jake Retzlaff to lead the BYU Cougars to College Football Playoff contention in 2025.
Instead, Retzlaff will lead one of the nation’s top Group of Five programs, Tulane, after he bounced his from BYU in order to dodge an honor code violation.
Source: Tulane will start BYU transfer Jake Retzlaff against Northwestern in the opener on Saturday. Iowa transfer Brendan Sullivan will be dressed and available for Tulane, as he returns from a lower body injury that’s limited him in practice recently. pic.twitter.com/C7tHWLXg7f
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) August 30, 2025
ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Saturday morning that Retzlaff won the starting job for the Green Wave just one month after walking on to his new team. He beat out Iowa transfer Brendan Sullivan for the position despite joining the program long after Sullivan.
Jake Retzlaff Left BYU For Tulane In A Cloud Of Controvery
So, why is Retzlaff at Tulane and not BYU? Well, earlier in the summer, he was accused of sexual assault by a woman citing a 2023 incident at his college apartment. The case was later dismissed, but Retzlaff did admit to having consensual sex with the woman.
Now, a college football player having consensual sex isn’t exactly notable. That is, unless that college football player goes to BYU.
The school, which is operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (more commonly known as Mormonism), explicitly bans premarital sex in its honor code.
The code, which all students agree to, states that students must “Live a chaste and virtuous life, including abstaining from sexual relations outside marriage between a man and a woman. Living a chaste and virtuous life also includes abstaining from same-sex romantic behavior.”
Obviously, Retzlaff’s admission to having consensual sex violates that code. He stood to face a seven-game suspension had he remained at the university.
Instead, he entered the transfer portal. But because he joined Tulane’s program so late in the offseason, the Green Wave did not have a scholarship available for him.
So instead, Retzlaff now leads Tulane into battle as a walk-on QB for a program with genuine College Football Playoff aspirations.