Big Ten football’s biggest winners and losers in 2024 transfer portal

The transfer portal can improve a program, but which teams have best managed to master the incredibly difficult numbers game this cycle?  Not every team adds as much as it subtracts in the portal, so the math rarely matches in the ledgers. Also attempting to compare a team with seven additions via the transfer portal after losing 20 players can seem like a daunting exercise. 

In an effort to simplify the problem and better evaluate teams as we enter the summer, let’s evaluate where each Power Four team stands. To do so, 247Sports takes the average rating of the players leaving each program — ratings via the 247Sports transfer rankings team — and compares it to the average rating of the players entering the program. The gross difference in players are not factored into the evaluations. Instead, the average player rating is all that matters, and we simply distill that number to reach a net gain or net loss via the 247Sports rating system.

Who are the biggest winners and losers? Having already examined the ACC, 247Sports turns its attention to grading the portal classes in the Big Ten, where a familiar blueblood and Purdue lead the pack.