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College football’s Transfer Portal Era has had a tremendous impact on the landscape of the sport thanks to the many players who pounce on the chance to get a change of scenery in the offseason. Virtually every team will end up losing guys to another school, but Ohio is currently entirely intact despite the departure of their head coach.
Tim Solich spent 16 seasons as the head coach of the Ohio Bobcats after being hired in 2005, and the program kept things in-house when naming a replacement by tapping Tim Albin, who had served as his offensive coordinator for the entirety of that tenure and spent a couple of years as his associate coach after Joe Burrow’s dad Jim retired from the role in 2019.
It initially looked like Ohio was going to end up regretting that decision after the team posted a 3-9 record during Albin’s inaugural season, but they bounced back in a big way with three consecutive 10-win campaigns.
That includes the 2024 season where the Bobcats only suffered a single loss in conference play at the hands of Miami of Ohio before getting revenge in the MAC Championship Game with a dominant 38-3 win over the RedHawks last Saturday.
It certainly seemed like the program was trending in the right direction, but things took a somewhat surprising turn just hours after that victory when the Charlotte 49ers announced they’d poached Albin with a five-year deal where he’ll initially receive $900,000 a year before his salary jumps to $1 million ahead of the 2028 season.
Now, you might think that move might have sparked a mass exodus that saw plenty of guys who played under Albin at Ohio decided to follow him to Charlotte.
However, as Eric Decker of The Athens Messenger notes, that has decidedly not been the case when you consider the Bobcats are currently the only team in the FBS who haven’t had a player enter the transfer portal since the window officially opened up on December 9th.
I may have undersold this a bit. Doing a little research, Ohio is the ONLY program in the FBS to not have a single player in the portal to this point. Not joking
Just an absurd stat that shows the culture and faith inside the program https://t.co/NeamMLiBs3
— Eric Decker (@Edecker17) December 13, 2024
There’s plenty of time for that to change, as players have until December 28th to test the waters. However, it would appear Ohio players are all-in even though it’s still unclear who will be coaching them next year.