New here? This is the regular Wednesday episode: one story from inside the week, the news that changes your January, and what we are seeing across programs, agents and athletes.
The Lead
In September 2023, Hutchinson Community College beat Coffeyville 37-7 in Kansas. A freshman named Tre Richardson returned two punts for touchdowns. A receiver named Oran Singleton Jr. caught one.
Each went through three more schools. Last Saturday they played on the same day again. Richardson scored twice for Louisville. Singleton caught 13 passes for 177 yards and three touchdowns for Tulsa, all career highs.
Singleton did not play football in 2022. At Tulsa he has 56 catches in nine games.
This Week's Read
Our Week 10 story follows five transfers behind five wins. Two of them started on the same junior college roster.
The same roster. Richardson stayed close to home in Topeka for junior college, spent 2024 at Division II Washburn and 2025 at Vanderbilt, and is on his fourth campus in four seasons at Louisville. Singleton started at Akron, started over at Hutchinson, led Eastern Michigan in catches in 2024 and caught four passes at West Virginia last year. Tulsa is his fifth program.
The second try. Devon Dampier lost to BYU by three in his first season at Utah. He came back. On Saturday he threw two touchdown passes, ran for two and caught a 29-yard pass as No. 3 Utah beat No. 7 BYU 28-20. "He wins us football games," Morgan Scalley said.
The coach who recruited him. Caden Veltkamp was recruited to Western Kentucky by an offensive coordinator who left before he enrolled. Three seasons later that coach got the Florida Atlantic job, and Veltkamp followed. He threw four touchdown passes Thursday in a 60-29 win over UTSA.
The Market Moved
The decision to enter gets made in December. January's football transfer window is 10 days, down from 15, and opens Jan. 4 for FBS and FCS. The Division I Cabinet approved it Oct. 7, per the NCAA, and CBS Sports reported Nov. 5 that the rest of the new calendar is approved too, including an earlier start to the season and a new offseason practice model. Ten days covers entering. A board has to be ranked before the names arrive.
The PCSA is down to weeks. USA Today reported Nov. 10 that one lobbyist who has worked with a power conference calls the bill "dead," while Randy Levine, the Yankees president, wrote Congress urging the House to pass it. Government funding lapses Dec. 11 and new members are seated in January.
Third-party money is growing. NIL Go cleared more than $190 million in September and October across 10,092 deals, On3 reported Nov. 9, citing the College Sports Commission. Of that, $52.09 million came from non-associated entities, businesses with no tie to the school, the highest such total this year.
What's moving: the search is going below FBS. Both receivers in this week's Lead were playing junior college football three years ago, and the network now shows more than 1,000 athletes outside FBS with agency representation. Agents are already working that level. Staffs who shop it will find represented players there.
Worth your time
Could Protect College Sports Act be running out of time? (USA Today, Nov. 10). For staffs and agents: who is still pushing the bill, who has written it off, and the dates that decide it.
From the Field
Programs are telling agents where to show their clients. This week a newer agency came to the network on a Power 4 program's referral.
Staffs start with the agent. In conversations with program staffs this week, the first question was who represents the players on a roster. If you represent players, have your client list current before Jan. 4.
The Toolbox · A 10-day window
Staffs. Rank your needs by position now, and put names beside them from levels you do not usually shop. Richardson was at a Division II program two years ago.
Agents. Have the January conversation with each client before his last game. Ten days covers entering. The decision should already be made, with three programs in mind where his position is thin.
Athletes. Know your role before you enter. Singleton caught four passes at West Virginia last year and has 56 at Tulsa. Ask where the catches, carries or snaps will come from.
New on the network
Trivia, two this week.
A Big 12 program joined the network. Its head coach is an alumnus, and it won the conference in its first season in the league.
An American Conference program joined too. In 1962, a president stood in its stadium and said the country would go to the moon.
The Trusted Takeaway
Two of Week 10's biggest games started on one junior college roster in Kansas. The next name on your board may be playing at a level you are not watching.
Who is the best player you have found at a junior college or below FBS? Reply to this email or write [email protected].
