A player the Tennessee Vols lost to the transfer portal earlier this offseason was ranked by 247Sports this week as one of the top 10 transfer players in the nation in their newly updated “final 2026 college football transfer portal rankings.”

247Sports ranked former Vols offensive lineman Lance Heard, who transferred to Kentucky in January, as the No. 8 overall transfer player in college football.

“Lance Heard turned heads in January when he announced his transfer from Tennessee to rival Kentucky after two productive seasons with the Volunteers, capped by an All-SEC campaign in 2025,” noted 247Sports’ Grant Hughes. “The 6-foot-6, 330-pound former five-star recruit began his career at LSU in 2023 before transferring to Tennessee after his true freshman campaign. He’s coming off the best season of his career, allowing just 19 pressures and two sacks across 479 snaps in pass protection.”

Josh Heupel and the Vols had no choice but to let Lance Heard leave

Heard is a good player who has a future in the NFL. Tennessee would obviously be a better team with him on the roster.

But Josh Heupel and the Vols had no choice but to let Heard walk this offseason.

One reason is because Heard wanted to stay at left tackle in 2026 instead of moving to right tackle. The Vols, however, are moving former five-star offensive lineman David Sanders to left tackle for his sophomore season in 2026 (I don’t know why there’s still a stigma around the left tackle vs right tackle debate — right tackles get paid now, too).

The other reason is because Heard’s agent asked for a “gargantuan” amount of money from Tennessee.

“Lance Heard had a really good solid year,” said VolQuest’s Austin Price in January. “His agent asked for a gargantuan amount of money, and Tennessee was not willing to do that. They liked the growth that David Sanders had over the last month and a half of the season, and how he played in the bowl game. And they liked what Jesse Perry brought them at right tackle early in the year. And so Tennessee felt good enough to where they were like, ‘Okay, Lance, we like you at this [price], but we don’t like you at this amount of money.’ And so they decided to part ways. That’s part of the new business model that is college athletics.”

College football is no longer about the best team a coach can build, it’s about the best team a program can afford (gone are the days of building a winning program through high school recruiting and development).

That means programs are going to have to split up with some good players from time to time. It’s not what anyone in the sport wants (or at least anyone who cares about the development of young athletes), but it’s the unfortunate reality of college football right now.