Every time a non-major blue blood program produces a legitimately great player, the conversation immediately shifts to where that player is going in the transfer portal. And frankly, it’s the lamest trend in college football.

It’s a conversation no one wants to have, but that’s the state of the sport right now. And it’s an uncomfortable conversation we need to start having with Mississippi State quarterback Kamario Taylor.

The Kamario Taylor discourse is egregious right now

Kamario Taylor is balling out for Mississippi State. He’s one of the best stories in all of college football right now. And yet, the dominant conversation around him isn’t about what he’s doing on the field. It’s about where he could go next.

There are genuine people on this planet saying there’s no chance he’s still a Bulldog after this season, and if he doesn’t leave, he’s “the most loyal person of all time.” How could that possibly be the case? Maybe he just wants to be at Mississippi State. Have you ever thought about that?

This is a player with extensive ties to that school. He’s not some mercenary waiting for the highest bidder. He’s going out and performing at an elite level for a program he chose, and the response from large portions of the college football world is to treat him like he’s already halfway out the door. That’s egregious.

This logic isn’t new, and it’s getting worse

Think back to some of your favorite players from the 2010, such as Lamar Jackson at Louisville. If that were happening in 2026, everyone would be asking where he could go. Could he be at Miami next year? Is Ohio State going to drop a bag for him?

The transfer portal discourse has completely warped how people talk about great players at programs outside the traditional powerhouses. And I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’ve never made those jokes before, because I have. But there’s a difference between a passing joke and genuinely convincing yourself that a player needs to leave his school to validate his talent.

This idea that every great player has to get funneled through the portal to one of these bigger-name programs is so annoying. It cheapens what these players are doing. It disrespects the programs building around them. And it reduces the transfer portal from a legitimate tool for player mobility into some kind of inevitability machine where the only acceptable outcome is “star player goes to blueblood.”

Kamario Taylor is at Mississippi State, he’s playing at an incredibly high level, and he’s one of the best stories in the sport. Just let the kid go ball out without trying to convince yourself he needs to be somewhere else.

Not every great player has to end up at Ohio State or Alabama or Georgia for their career to mean something. The assumption that they do is one of the lamest trends in all of college football, and it’s long past time people stopped treating it like a foregone conclusion.